


Lost Country

by iridan



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Arthur Morgan's Many Horses, Asexuality Spectrum, Author Chose Not To Archive Warnings, Bisexuality, Bonding, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Found Family, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Playing Jenga With Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:48:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 161,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25099432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridan/pseuds/iridan
Summary: A big, broad-shouldered man came through the door, the look of a long-haul trucker hanging around him like a ratty coat. He was wearing old oil-stained jeans and a frayed flannel shirt thrown over a white t-shirt, his scuffed boots peeling up at the toes with age.He had the air of a man who’d reached the end of his rope. He had a battered wide-brimmed hat pulled low to cover his long, frazzled hair, half of which was scraped back into a loose tail. He had dark hair and dark skin and dark eyes that were framed by the deep-set bruises Arthur only ever saw on long-haulers and cattlemen, the marks of too many nights at the wheel or in the saddle, the normal rhythms of life stretched out and pulling at the seams.The feller was handsome. Arthur noticed that as an afterthought, his breath catching in his chest. Under the bruises and the loose strands of hair, the feller was handsome. His eyes were bright and keen.“Uh,” said Arthur, caught flat-footed by the unanticipated surge of attraction tightening his belly.  “Hi.”The feller looked Arthur dead in the eye. “I need all of the caramel sauce that you have,” he said.(or, a coffee shop au. yeah. i know.)
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith
Comments: 192
Kudos: 366





	1. lost country: i

**Author's Note:**

> shows up 21 months late to the party, desperately clutching starbucks: yall ready for this 
> 
> so, uh. hi. i know that the rdr2 fandom is probably long since gone cold and quiet, but like. i've been working on this fic on and off for 19 months. it's my baby. it's never been ready for the world, but by god she's ready now. 
> 
> or i'm ready to stop obsessively opening the document, changing the placement of two words, and closing the document again. 
> 
> same difference. 
> 
> before you get going, PLEASE BE AWARE: i very intentionally did not tag some things, because the tags would be spoilers for later content in the story. If that bothers you, please feel free to click back, or to wait until the entire thing is posted (should be about 10 weeks from today, since the fic is mostly done, just. in need of refining in the later parts.) when it's all up, i will add a list of content tags at the end, so you can click ahead if you so desire. i will also be posting chapter-specific content warnings in the end notes of every chapter as they go live. 
> 
> there WILL NOT be any non/dubcon, underage, or anything like that, otherwise i would tag for it. 
> 
> PLEASE ENJOY. i have sunk. so many hours into this game and this fic. yeehaw. 
> 
> there will be 10 or so chapters of content, a chapter of notes and things and infodumping, and a chapter of deleted scenes, because I have been working on this fic for 19 months and there are many. many deleted scenes. updates every sunday!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shows up 21 months late to the party, desperately clutching starbucks: yall ready for this
> 
> so, uh. hi. i know that the rdr2 fandom is probably long since gone cold and quiet, but like. i've been working on this fic on and off for 19 months. it's my baby. it's never been ready for the world, but by god she's ready now.
> 
> or i'm ready to stop obsessively opening the document, changing the placement of two words, and closing the document again.
> 
> same difference.
> 
> before you get going, PLEASE BE AWARE: i very intentionally did not tag some things, because the tags would be spoilers for later content in the story. If that bothers you, please feel free to click back, or to wait until the entire thing is posted (should be about 10 weeks from today, since the fic is mostly done, just. in need of refining in the later parts.) when it's all up, i will add a list of content tags at the end, so you can click ahead if you so desire. i will also be posting chapter-specific content warnings in the end notes of every chapter as they go live.
> 
> there WILL NOT be any non/dubcon, underage, or anything like that, otherwise i would tag for it.
> 
> PLEASE ENJOY. i have sunk. so many hours into this game and this fic. yeehaw.
> 
> there will be 10 or so chapters of content, a chapter of notes and things and infodumping, and a chapter of deleted scenes, because I have been working on this fic for 19 months and there are many. many deleted scenes. updates every sunday!

_And I also have the impression--a bit hazy,_

_Like the dream one tries to remember on waking up to the dim_

_light of dawn--_

_That there’s something better in me than myself._

-fernando pessoa, “oxfordshire”

  
  
  


lost country

After the dust settled and life slowly resumed its normal sleepy pace, John took to telling folk that he was the reason Arthur met the love of his life. John said it grandly, like he arranged some great meeting, like everything that happened after Arthur met Charles was part of some sweeping romantic plan John had cooked up to finally get Arthur to stop moping around Lost Country Brewing Company, LLC like a lonesome old dog. It was all bullshit, and Arthur would tell that to anybody who'd listen. John'd had no hand in it; really all John did was drink too much on a Tuesday night and call off sick Wednesday morning, leaving the opening crew desperately short-handed. Really all John did was act like an ass, again, and expect Arthur to swoop in and clean up his mess, again. 

Whether or not cleaning up that mess had led to Arthur meeting the love of his life, well. 

That was irrelevant, in Arthur's view of things. 

What really happened was this: 

Hosea called Arthur in the black of the very early morning not two hours after Arthur’d finally made it home, exhausted and frayed from working the night shift on a Taco Tuesday. Arthur, like an idiot, picked up on the second ring, and Hosea bullied Arthur into hauling his sorry ass back up out of bed and down into Valentine, where Arthur’d stomped around the shop cursing John’s miserable name, turning the ovens on and grinding the morning’s coffee, kicking the last remnants of the night crowd under the tables. 

Arthur hated working mornings. He was a night owl by nature which was why, when Dutch’d bought up a shoddy rundown little storefront six years back and told them all that they were turning over a collective new leaf as bartenders and baristas, Arthur had immediately claimed the night shift in perpetuity. 

He’d just never been made for mornings, especially not when he’d gone home, stripped his boots off, washed away the grime of the day and collapsed into bed. Getting up and stumbling back to work on less than four hours of sleep just made Arthur flat out mean. 

Well, mean _er._ Arthur generally wasn’t known for his sunny disposition.

Anyway, it was John’s fault that Arthur'd had to go in, because John had _known_ that he’d be working in the morning and had come into Lost Country last night regardless, knocking back glass after glass of shitty beer, already half-drunk from earlier misadventures. Arthur’d cut him off well before midnight, able to sense which way the wind was blowing, but locking a greasy near-alcoholic out of the beer fridge didn’t really work well when said greasy near-alcohol had his own set of keys. 

John had blacked out some time around one in the morning, and Arthur should've known then that the little bastard would weasel his way out of coming in to open in the morning. John had a gift for collecting suspiciously-convenient hangovers. 

“Miserable little shithead dumbass,” Arthur growled under his breath, dumping beans into the big industrial grinder Hosea had swindled some moron out of at a flea market years back. He flicked the grinder on. The old machine rattled and groaned, moaning a thin protest, but after a minute it coughed to life and the sharp smell of freshly-ground coffee beans filled the air, banishing the miasma of stale beer and old dust that usually filled the place.

(Taco Tuesday was usually a nightmare, because Pearson, the bar cook, couldn't cook tacos. Whatever he made and passed off as tacos usually ended up regurgitated underneath various tables, toilet seats and other surfaces, relegated to being the opener's problem.) 

Arthur got the house blend brewing, filling his own chipped mug first, and once he’d had some coffee in him he felt a little more human, grimly determined to take on his unexpectedly long day. 

_Next time I see Marston I’m gonna kick his ass,_ Arthur decided. Beating the shit out of John usually made him feel better, especially when there was a good reason to kick him around a little. The horror show that constituted the men's restroom post-Taco Tuesday absolutely counted as a good reason, in Arthur's opinion. 

Irritation towards John resolved into a decently-solid plan, Arthur went about the rest of the opening ritual, helping himself to more coffee whenever he drifted past the machine, and by the time it was officially time to open--five-thirty in the goddamn morning, because Valentine was a livestock town and got up before even the sun--Arthur was awake, at least, and moving no slower than he usually did.

At some point Mary-Beth had come in through the back and started the morning’s baking. All the bagels and shit they sold in the cases in front of the bar Dutch bought in bulk and shipped into the store frozen, but the pastries and sweets and various tiny breads Lost Country offered alongside its perpetually burnt coffee were the ladies’ particular pride, so they traded off who came in every morning and started the day’s baking. 

Arthur liked Mary-Beth. Tilly was his favorite of the women--well, Tilly and Sadie, though Arthur’d never really thought of Sadie as one of the women--mostly because Tilly was too sharp for Arthur to keep up with and always made him laugh running rings around him in conversation, but Tilly’d worked last night with him and had apparently had the good sense to ignore Hosea’s call, if he’d even bothered trying her in the first place. 

_Hosea probably ain’t even bother tryin’ anybody else,_ Arthur thought sourly, sweeping up crumbled napkins and skirting what he hoped was only a beer spill and not anything worse. Hosea would’ve known that Arthur was the only one dumb enough to pick up the phone when Hosea called at three in the morning. Why bother letting half a dozen other phones ring to voicemail when he could just call Arthur, who’d picked up with a bleary “Who’s dead?” on the second ring?

One of these days, Arthur ought to just disconnect his phone and pitch it into the horse pond behind his house. Damn thing was more trouble than it was worth.

Mary-Beth was sweet, though, and she spent the morning flitting in and out of the front room spilling over with new ideas for stories. Arthur liked to listen to her talk, especially since she’d known him long enough to not bother with waiting for him to string a reply together before five o’clock. She just chattered on, plying him with bits of blueberry muffin while he picked up around the floor and sketched, occasionally tossing him the dark heels of the breads she was making, banana and raisin and rye and sourdough, some of them smeared with jam, others dripping with salty cubes of butter. 

By the time Arthur got his first customer of the day he was awake and well-fed enough to be almost genial. He didn’t even growl when the bell rang, the door swinging open to let the dusty gloom of Valentine air sweep through the shop. Mary-Beth cut off mid-description and Arthur put down his most recent piece of bread--banana walnut, soft and warm in his mouth--and turned around. 

He even brushed his hands off on his apron. The Health Inspector, Lost Country's perennial enemy, would’ve wept to see it.

A big, broad-shouldered man came through the door, the look of a long-haul trucker hanging around him like a ratty coat. He was wearing old oil-stained jeans and a frayed flannel shirt thrown over a white t-shirt, his scuffed boots peeling up at the toes with age.

He had the air of a man who’d reached the end of his rope. He had a battered wide-brimmed hat pulled low to cover his long, frazzled hair, half of which was scraped back into a loose tail while the other half framed his face. He had dark hair and dark skin and dark eyes that were framed by the deep-set bruises Arthur only ever saw on long-haulers and cattlemen, the marks of too many nights at the wheel or in the saddle, the normal rhythms of life stretched out and pulling at the seams. 

The feller was handsome. Arthur noticed that as an afterthought, his breath catching in his chest. Under the bruises and the loose strands of hair, the feller was handsome. His eyes were bright and keen. 

“Uh,” said Arthur, caught flat-footed by the unanticipated surge of attraction tightening his belly. “Hi.” 

The feller looked Arthur dead in the eye. “I need all of the caramel sauce that you have,” he said. 

“Yeah,” said Arthur, because Arthur was an idiot, “okay, sure. You want that by the bottle or the case?”

The trucker gave Arthur a long, slow blink. “What?”

“The--uh, the caramel,” said Arthur. He tried not to redden. He realized now after he’d already opened his fool mouth that the feller probably meant that he’d like some caramel-flavored coffee or maybe one of those frozen coffee-smoothie-milkshake things Bill, Tilly and Karen were always drinking, but Arthur’d already put his foot in his mouth and he was a man who stuck to his guns.

He was also, apparently, a man who mixed his metaphors when flustered. He gave a mental shrug and went with it. 

He grabbed a bottle of caramel sauce from one of the high shelves, turning it so the trucker could see the label. “See?” 

The trucker blinked again. He’d definitely had a long night; he looked like he’d brought the road in with him, miles of black asphalt yawning behind his eyes. “You… sell the bottles?”

“Sure do,” Arthur said, even though he knew that they did _not_. All of the syrups and caramels and things were supposed to be for bar staff only. Arthur didn't know why they had half of what they did--the regular crowd in Valentine was not known for its affection for elderberry simple syrup or amaranth bitters, both of which Arthur could see stocked on the shelves up behind the bar. 

_Fuck it,_ Arthur thought. _If Hosea gets mad it’s his own fault for makin’ me come in anyway. He can take it up with Marston._

“Four ninety-nine,” Arthur said helpfully, choosing a price that sounded more or less right to him. He didn't know anything about the going price for a bottle of caramel sauce, but judging by the abject confusion in the trucker's dark eyes, he didn't know shit all about it either. Arthur could work with that. He was a shit actor but a passable liar. Arthur leaned into his little fiction wholeheartedly. “I can also, uh, getcha a coffee if y’want somethin’ to put it in. The caramel, I mean,” he added, as the confusion in the trucker's handsome face only deepened. 

The trucker eyed Arthur. Arthur eyed him right back. Arthur knew that he had a mean face, between his crooked nose and the scar on his chin and the flat pale green of his eyes. Unnerving, folk said. Like looking through sea ice, whatever that was. That was why nobody ever started shit on nights Arthur had the bar. He had a face like he’d end fights and fists big enough to make the ending hurt a fair bit. 

The trucker, finally, nodded. “Alright,” he said. “One bottle, and as big a cup of coffee as you have.”

“Done,” Arthur said. To make up for his general inability to talk to people like a human being, Arthur ducked into the kitchen and came back out with the biggest mug he could find, a godawful giant monstrosity that an unsuspecting man could drown in. It was one of Dutch’s mugs, matte black, with the words BIG DADDY printed on the side in hideous orange letters. 

Arthur, steadfastly ignoring the trucker’s rising eyebrows, filled it near to the top, leaving only enough room for cream and a few squirts of caramel sauce, and set the whole thing down in front of the trucker, thunking the bottle of caramel sauce down next to it. 

The trucker’s eyebrows had disappeared entirely under his hat. He looked half like he’d been hit in the face and half like he thought he was gonna hit Arthur.

“There y’are,” Arthur said, unnecessarily. “That’ll be six eighty-five.” 

“Six eighty-five,” the trucker repeated. 

“Six eighty-five,” Arthur agreed. He and the trucker stared at each other, the price of the coffee hanging between them, the absurdity of it all stretched out, straining. Arthur could feel a redness begin to creep up the back of his neck. 

“Oh my god, Arthur,” said Mary-Beth, poking her head out of the kitchen. “You go get the next round of muffins out of the oven, I’ll take care of this poor feller here.” 

“Muffins,” said Arthur, seizing the lifeline with both hands. “Got it. ‘Bye, mister.” He fled to the safety of the back room, but not before he heard the trucker say, in a very bemused tone, “Goodbye?”

“You’ll have to forgive him,” Mary-Beth said, as the kitchen door swung shut. “He works nights at the bar, mostly. Mornings ain’t his thing, bless his heart. D’you want me to remake that for you?”

 _Stupid,_ Arthur thought, scowling at the oven. _Stupid, stupid._ First person Arthur’d been attracted to in god knew how long--a few years, at least--and Arthur stared at him for a solid thirty seconds and then scared him off with an overabundance of caramel sauce. 

_Fuckin’ typical,_ he thought. He kind of wanted to hit something, but he was a bit too old to be punching walls, especially walls in his place of employment. Hosea knew where Arthur lived and also signed Arthur's paychecks. He'd get his one way or the other, if Arthur started breaking shit. Arthur sighed deeply. It was a pity the trucker’d come into Lost Country for morning coffee instead of an evening nightcap. Arthur could never be described as _personable,_ but he was usually better with people at night, especially when he could get over his nerves with a surreptitious shot or two.

 _Not that a feller like that would go for a feller like me,_ Arthur thought ruefully. Under all the road-blurred edges and the general air of desperation, the trucker’d been handsome. He'd been young. He probably cleaned up real nice, probably didn’t have no trouble finding company in between shifts on the road, no trouble at all. 

Arthur himself was too sour-faced and worn out to get much interest. Folk’d try to catch Arthur's eye now and again, but never folk who looked like that trucker. 

“Arthur!” Mary-Beth called. “The muffins!” 

Arthur blinked, startled out of his sullen thoughts. He smelled smoke. “Shit!” 

\---

Arthur’s day did not much improve from there. John finally dragged his sorry self in around eleven, grey-skinned and groaning--his delicate condition not helped by the fact that Arthur had smacked him upside the head the second he’d come through the door, and none too gently neither--and Kieran came not long after to let Mary-Beth go home, but Mary-Beth of course couldn’t leave without regaling them _both_ with Arthur’s morning misadventure. 

“You just gave him a bottle of caramel sauce?” John asked, disbelievingly. “He’s gonna want one every time he comes in now! That guy’s always in here gettin’ something sweet.” 

Arthur groaned. “Well, he weren’t real clear now, was he? He came stormin’ in an’ all he asked for was caramel sauce. How was I supposed t’know?” He hesitated. “That feller comes in here a lot?”

“Oh,” said John, a wicked grin spreading across his face, pulling at his stupid scars, “it’s like that, is it?”

“Shut up,” Arthur growled. 

“Oh-ho! It _is_ like that!” John crowed, delighted. Mary-Beth laughed. Kieran shifted uncomfortably. He was still pretty new, Kieran, and he wasn’t all that sure of his place in the whole big pack of them yet. He mostly kept to himself or to the gentler members of Dutch’s patchwork crew, like Mary-Beth, Javier, Hosea and Uncle. 

Kieran and John got along just fine because John was a little fucking con artist, but most of the other boys, Arthur and Dutch and Bill and Micah, made Kieran nervous. 

Arthur didn’t mind the younger man's timidity. He used it to his advantage now, pinning Kieran with a hard stare, daring him to laugh. 

Kieran went white as a sheet. 

Arthur grunted. “Shut up, John,” he said again. “Ain’t like nothin’. Jus’ wanna know if I gotta worry about him puttin’ a dent in the inventory, is all.” 

“You want him to put a dent in something else, that’s what you want,” John said, leering. “He comes in three or four times a week, next time I see him I can put in a good word for ya, see if he goes for big, dumb and stupid.” 

Arthur scowled. Then he remembered that Hosea wasn’t around to yell at him, so he hauled off and punched John square in the mouth. 

He felt better after that. Kieran blanched at the sight of blood and fled to the kitchens. Mary-Beth sighed and shook her head. John cut his lip on his teeth and got blood all over the counter. 

Arthur, shaking out his hand, decided he’d done his due service for the day, grabbed his shit, and left. 

“You can tell Hosea that I ain’t comin’ in ‘til Friday!” Arthur hollered over his shoulder as he went. “He owes me and he knows it!” 

“You’ll have to take that up with him!” Mary-Beth hollered back. Arthur resolved to toss his phone out as soon he got back home. 

He tugged on his jacket and his helmet, swung a leg over the back of his bike, and gave her a kick. She was old, his bike, only a few years younger than Arthur himself, but she was in much better shape than he was. One kick was all she needed to rumble to life beneath him, the familiar growl of the engine a welcome sound, the reverb echoing in Arthur’s ribcage and settling Arthur's always-restless thoughts. 

He backed out of the parking lot and left Lost Country Brewing Company, LLC, in the dust behind him. Valentine lingered for a moment, its few rows of worn-out, old-timey buildings red with dust, the smell of cattle and sheep thick in the air, before Arthur hit the empty road and opened the throttle, letting the roar of his bike and the rush of the wind sweep everything else away.

Arthur didn’t live too far out from Valentine, though he was technically situated across state lines. (Ambarino did not believe in income taxes, which Arthur, given his somewhat radical upbringing and patchy cash-based income, deeply appreciated.) 

The ride was an easy one, as nice at eleven in the morning as it was at eleven at night, all woods and water and dramatic views of the high buttes of New Hanover, the towering peaks of the Grizzlies, the sweep of the river and the fresh, startling green of the forests flush with their late spring growth. 

Arthur avoided the main roads, choosing instead the long, winding state route that took him along the banks of the Dakota River, the smell of pines fresh and clean and heavy in the air. Spring had come fully to the lowlands of Heartlands County, where Valentine sat nestled between the forests of Cumberland County and the wide scrubby plains of the Heartlands. Arthur had some spring up in his little piece of Ambarino, south as he was of the high mountains, but in the distant peaks he could still see snow shining white against the hard blue sky. 

Here, though, the ice had long since melted off the river and the birds had all come back. Bright songbirds flitted by in a rush of red and green. Orioles flashed and fluttered. A velvet-headed buck put his nose up as Arthur’s bike roared past and the buck broke for the river, tail flashing, as an eagle rose up from the shining blue water with something small caught in its claws.

There were many things that Arthur disliked about living near Valentine, chief among them the pervasive smell of cow shit and the lack of anything to do on the weekends, but the view sure wasn't one of those things.

Arthur rode easy all the way up to the old fort, crossed the battered bridge sticking out over the river, and left the river road behind, trading forests and red buttes for the thinner woods flanking the mountains, the fields that would soon be orange and red and yellow with wildflowers. 

When Arthur’d been a kid, home had been transient and shapeless, even before he’d fallen in with Dutch and Hosea. Home had been motel rooms and the backs of old cars, had been one shitty clapboard apartment after another up and down the Rocky Mountains. He hadn't lived anywhere for longer than a season. 

Home now was a little place on a plot of land not far from the geysers and pools of Cotorra Springs, tucked up a pretty green hillside against the broad grey flank of a nameless mountain. Arthur’s place wasn’t much, just a two-bedroom house that leaked when it rained, its counters chipped and its floors creaky, but it had come with a good bit of land to it and Arthur’s heart still unfolded every time he rounded the corner and caught sight of it, the crooked fence posts, the drafty old barn, the horses out grazing in the field.

A twenty-minute trail ride to the south brought him to the Dakota River. Twenty minutes north put him well on his way to Donner Falls and the reservoir beyond it. East was the high steppe, the hills that rolled orange and yellow with poppies, and west lay the teeth of the Grizzlies. 

All and all, Arthur was pretty content with what he’d ended up with. 

He guided his bike down the gravel driveway, steering clear of the wet spots that had bowed the earth with all the early spring rains, and killed the engine near the barn. He walked his bike the rest of the way, leaving her in the shade underneath a lip of roof, and stretched, popping the sore spots out of his back. 

“I’m gettin’ old,” he told the chickens, which had once again broken free of their barnside coop and were pecking around the yard with cheerful abandon. Copper, Arthur’s old gun dog, and Cain, his newer spotted cur, had never paid the chickens any mind, so the chickens had never learned any fear. There was an orange cat who’d been sniffing around the barn for a few weeks who might change that, but until there was blood and feathers all through his house Arthur wouldn’t be too worried. 

He shaded his eyes against the day and sighed. 

“Guess there’s no use fightin’ it,” he muttered, toeing the chickens gently aside. “I probably should get to work, huh?” 

The chickens, being chickens, kept about their business. 

Arthur gave himself another minute to feel old and grouchy, and then he got down to work. 

He didn’t run a proper farm by any means. In the spring and summer the women would come by sometimes and plant things, given that Arthur had somehow ended up with the most property, but Dutch’s place was where all the brewery shit was grown, the hops and some wheat and some odds and ends used to flavor whatever latest concoction came spluttering out of the tap. 

Arthur’s land usually only yielded tomatoes. The odd pepper, a few dense bushes of mint, that sort of thing. He didn’t do any of that--he left the growing to Karen and Abigail, who both had the knack for it. 

But there was other work to be done; he kept chickens, he had a few goats, he had two lazy dogs and a rotating cast of stray cats and a whole slew of horses. The fences needed periodic mending and there were holes in the fields that needed filling in. The animals needed watered, the barn swept out, the grass around the house kept more or less in check. 

Hell, the horses were near a full-time job all on their own. 

Arthur had started with one horse and now somehow had a whole herd of them. Buell, his first, was inherited. A sour old Korean War vet named Hamish who’d lived up the road a ways had spotted Arthur riding his bike along O’Creagh’s Run one afternoon and had bullied him into going fishing. One giant pike and a swim in the lake later, Arthur and Hamish were fast friends. 

The war hadn’t been good to Hamish--hadn’t been good to anybody, really--and his health had been pretty poor, ‘til one day about six months after they’d met Arthur had come around to go fishing again and found old Hamish dead on his own front porch. Buell hadn’t had anywhere else to go and Arthur’d had the land. He’d taken Buell home and set the poor bastard up in the overgrown paddock, and then a few months later he’d gotten a letter in the mail telling him that Buell, along with everything else Hamish had owned, was Arthur’s anyway. 

After Buell had come the rest of the horses in fits and starts; Old Boy was John’s, Silver Dollar Hosea’s, and Brown Jack was Bill’s. The rest of them were Arthur’s. Most were rescues of one kind or another and all of them demanded Arthur’s attention. They wanted fattening up and brushing down. They wanted to go out trail riding, to get a view of life beyond Arthur’s land. They wanted shoeing or to kick off their shoes or to forgo the entire process and stomp the farrier to death whenever he dared come by. 

(Buell and Lyra, one of Arthur’s mares, were the worst about it. Lyra had put more holes in human beings than a groundhog could dig in a field. Once Buell and Lyra finally kicked the bucket, assuming they were not too spiteful to die, Arthur was never, ever buying a white horse again.) 

Rooster was waiting for Arthur as Arthur put his bike away and made the trek from the barn to the inner paddock, stiff and tired. He caught sight of Arthur and stamped his front hooves, tossing his head and screaming his displeasure. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Arthur grumbled. He was late with the feed and Rooster knew it. Arthur usually did the morning feed at nine or so, after he’d slept off the effects of his night, but it was now nearly noon. 

Arrayed behind Rooster the rest of the herd watched with interest, grouped together in patient clumps beside their empty feed buckets. 

Arthur decided that he was too tired to do a full feed--damn horses had acres and acres of grass to chew on, after all--so he only grabbed a pair of buckets from the barn, shooing away the day’s accumulation of barn cats, and filled them with feed. Trailing oats and therefore chickens, he made his way back to the pasture fence. Rooster whinnied again and tried to shove his face in the nearest bucket. 

“Back off, ya greedy bastard,” Arthur growled, wrangling the gate open and checking Rooster out of the way with a hip. Despite his outsize temper, Roose was just a bit of a horse and fairly easy to shove around. “You’ll get yours, I promise, but you cain’t eat _all_ of it.” 

Rooster disagreed, attempting to shove his nose in the bucket again. Arthur swung it out of the way and managed to get to the safety of the mares, who were all clustered eagerly around their empty feeder. Rooster tried to weasel his way in and got nipped by Reliance for his trouble. Whickering crossly, Rooster backed off and went to mind his own trough, snorting and stamping when Hemingway, one of the geldings, drifted a little too close. 

Arthur fed the mares first, then the geldings, then Buell in his paddock--the sour-tempered old creature had to have a field of his own--and Old Boy and Brown Jack next. He fed Rooster last, mostly just to be an asshole. 

Once the horses were fed, Arthur took care of the goats, scattered some more feed for the chickens, and made a valiant effort at cutting back the scraggly grass around his house. By the time he finished the sun had swung west of the mountains and turned the sky soft and pink. Arthur made his rounds again, making sure everyone was watered for the night, and then turned in, retreating to the safety of his house. 

It wasn’t until nearly full dark, after a sandwich and a glass of bourbon, that Arthur sank into his armchair and realized what an idiot he’d been. 

_I sold him a bottle of caramel sauce,_ Arthur thought, putting his face in his hands. _Jesus Christ._

Arthur’d never been particularly smooth. Dutch and Hosea could talk anyone into bed--and had--and women had always loved John’s vaguely dirty charm, but Arthur’d never been very good at talking to anybody. He’d had some moderate success as a younger man, but back then Arthur’d had enough swagger and energy to make up for his occasional bouts of conversational stupidity. 

Now Arthur was old and tired. His nose had been broken quite a few more times and he was worn out, guarded and slow and badly out of practice when it came to talking to folks. 

_Today might’ve been a new low, though,_ he thought wryly. It was a shame. He had liked the look of the feller, even though he’d been exhausted and road-weary and maybe a bit overfond of caramel sauce.

Arthur eyed the bottom of his glass, studying the last few sips of whisky there. _Ah well. Ain’t nothing for it._

He drained his glass and fell asleep in his armchair thinking of dark hair and warm hands. 

\---

Despite what he’d said to John and Mary-Beth, Arthur ended up going in to work on Thursday anyway, though it was for his regular evening shift instead of an opener. He’d contemplated pitching his phone into the horse pond behind his house but in the end he hadn’t bothered. Everyone knew where he lived anyway, so it wasn’t like he could get away from it all. 

Hosea was waiting, dusted with flour and scowling, when Arthur rumbled in to work at four. Arthur grinned at him. 

“Hosea,” he said jovially. 

Hosea scowled harder and stabbed a floury finger at him. “Don’t take that tone with me,” he said. “Have you seen John? He looks like he went three rounds with a meat grinder.” 

Arthur waved Hosea off. “Aw, he’ll be fine,” Arthur said dismissively. “I ain’t even hit him that hard. ‘Sides, he was askin’ for it. You know how he gets.” 

“I know that I had to send him home early on Wednesday on account of his nose being broke,” Hosea scolded. “And I know he looks an awful fright. Abigail’s on the warpath, you know. I’ve half a mind to let her lay into you.” 

“Aw, Abigail won’t do nothin’ to me,” Arthur said, brushing Hosea’s concerns aside again. “She _definitely_ knows how John can get, and if she didn’t kill me for that one thing back in ninety-three she ain’t gonna kill me today.”

Hosea sighed. “You have got to let it go,” he said. “This bad blood between you and John, I mean. It ain’t good for anybody, least of all for you.” 

It was Arthur’s turn to scowl. “I ain’t hit him ‘cause of _that,_ ” he said. 

Hosea arched one grey eyebrow. “You didn’t, huh? Well, the _why_ of it doesn’t matter, just that you did it and it’s done. You know how I feel about fighting in the shop, Arthur.” 

“It weren’t a fight, just a little dust-up, Hosea, c’mon,” Arthur said. “Marston’ll be back to normal in a week or two, maybe just a little uglier than he was before, an’ with luck he’s learned a lesson about pickin’ at me while I’m in the process of doin’ him a favor.” 

“Be that as it may,” said Hosea, and Arthur did not like the gleam in the old man’s blue eyes, did not like it one bit, “I’ve told you about fighting in the shop before, and since you decided that you ain’t gonna listen to me, I’ve gotta find a way to make the message stick.” 

“Hosea,” Arthur said warningly. Hosea shook a floury finger at Arthur again. 

“Morning shift,” he said. “Monday through Friday--I ain’t dumb enough to put you on a Sunday morning, you’d kill the church crowd, but you’re on mornings for the next--indeterminate length of time, I think, ‘til I decide you’ve learned _your_ lesson.” 

“Hosea!” Arthur protested, more than a little horrified. “C’mon, I won’t hit him again. You know me workin’ mornings won’t be good for anybody.”

“Probably not,” Hosea allowed, “but I don’t mind making you miserable for a month or two if it means you and John put whatever it is between you to rest. Now,” he said, and his tone dropped considerably into a range Arthur had learned never to argue with, “that’s gonna be the last of it. Don’t try and change my mind or go crying to Dutch -- he likes you and John fighting about as much as I do. Get to work.” 

Arthur stared at Hosea mutinously, anger buzzing in the back of his mouth, but he could see that there’d be no swaying the old man. 

Growing up Hosea had always been the backbone of Arthur’s strange little family. Dutch was the breath and blood and the beating heart of them and Arthur was maybe the hands, but Hosea had always been the structure and the foundation. He’d been the one to keep them going when Dutch’s grand plans fell apart or when Arthur’s anger got the better of him. Hosea was the one who’d made sure they all got fed, who’d checked them into hotels when the road got too hard or one of them took sick. 

For the most part Hosea’s word was law, and had been for twenty years.

“Fine,” Arthur spat, unable to completely shed his venom, and he ducked past Hosea and slammed his way into the bar. 

Thursday nights in Valentine were just like every other night in Valentine, which meant that Lost Country was packed to her creaky old gills by six o’clock as ranch hands and cow herds came in for the day, stinking to high heaven and cruising for a drink or a fuck or a fight. 

All three were available at Lost Country Brewing Company, LL-goddamn-C. There were a couple of other watering holes in Valentine, but Smithfields was one of those shitty fake Wild West saloon gimmicks geared towards the town’s small population of tourists and Keane’s was small, cramped and perpetually out of both decent drink and desirable bed partners. 

Lost Country was the only dive in the county that had hot food, real beer and a regular share of open-minded women looking to spend a night or two with a genuine cowboy. Dutch and Hosea didn’t mind hookers working the crowds so long as the hookers didn’t bring lawmen sniffing around, so even on a Thursday the place was raucous and randy, beer and whiskey flowing through the crowd like water. 

The noise and the smell did nothing to improve Arthur’s mood. 

All night he slammed around the bar in a savage temper, slinging drinks with probably more vigor than necessary, bristling like wet cat at any of the night’s patrons who tried to give him any guff. 

Arthur and his patchwork family had been in Valentine for near on six years now, though, long enough to be considered locals by all but the sourest, most suspicious old cattlemen, and most folk knew to steer clear of Arthur when he was in a mood as black as this one. In the early days he’d had his pick of fights. Ranchers and cowboys were rough by nature, used to swaggering around and beating on sullen-looking out-of-towners who didn’t get out of their way fast enough. 

Folk learned after a few months that trying to put the hurt on Arthur was likely to end in a shattered cheekbone. 

_I shoulda been nicer,_ Arthur thought darkly as the night began to wind down. Most of the folks looking for a fuck had paired off already, gone back to their homes or up the road to the Saints Hotel for a cheap room. There were still a couple of big boys who could probably be goaded into a brawl and a few long-faced drunks nursing whiskeys at the bar, but the raw, rowdy energy of a bar at eleven or twelve usually faded to beer-soaked sorrow by two. 

_Shoulda been nicer, and shoulda thrown a fight or two._ Arthur was no stranger to taking a beating--if he’d let the Valentine boys lay him out a time or two, maybe now they’d still be up for a fight when Arthur really needed one. 

But no, he’d had to be full of piss and vinegar when they moved in, angry at anything and everything. And now none of these cowboys would take a swing at him, no matter how rude Arthur was. A crying shame, it was. A town full of big, strong men and not one of them was brave enough to put one in Arthur’s jaw. 

_Sean’ll be back soon,_ he told himself. Sean was always good for a fight, even if he never won. And Hosea couldn’t even get mad at Arthur and Sean for brawling, because usually it was entirely consensual. Sean liked to box and Arthur liked to fight regardless of what kind he was doing. 

But Sean was a state away getting up to no good in Blackwater, burning through his annual bonus at what was no doubt a prodigious pace, and Javier had gone with him. 

Arthur’s other option was to pick a fight with Micah, who _was_ on shift tonight and was busy oozing slime where he wasn't wanted near a crowd of young farmer's daughters, but Dutch had a weird soft spot for Micah and if Hosea was willing to make everybody miserable by throwing Arthur at the morning shift, he’d be willing to take Arthur out back and shoot him for stirring up more blood in the workplace. 

_Fuck it,_ Arthur thought bitterly, as two A.M. came and went and Abigail put out the last call and began to collect tabs. _I’m just gonna have to deal with it, I guess._

The prospect darkened his mood even further, and by the time they were closed up for the night and began to grab all their shit from the staff room to clear out, Arthur was so short-tempered and nearly mute with fury that Dutch, who liked to spend the night shift in the brew-house out back until last call, when he liked to pace the floor and boot drunks out on their asses personally, took Arthur by the scruff of the neck like a misbehaving puppy and shook him, albeit gently enough. 

“Hosea told me,” Dutch said. He smiled, his eyes turning up at the corners, and Arthur felt some of the anger go out of him at the sight. He'd always had a hard time arguing with Dutch. “Listen, son, I ain’t gonna tell you how to run your life. You’ve got an anger in you, and that’s alright--you’ve got plenty to be angry about. Just… point it somewhere more productive than John's face, alright? For Hosea’s sake, if not for John's. The old girl is worried about you.” 

Arthur blew out a breath. Dutch didn’t let him go, his grip firm and grounding. He and Arthur were of a height now, had been since Arthur was seventeen years old, but some part of Arthur would likely see Dutch as ten feet tall until he died. 

“Fine,” Arthur grumbled. “For the old man. You know I’m gonna be a bear in a week or two, Dutch. I don’t do mornings.” 

Dutch chuckled and shook Arthur again. “I know,” he said. “Me and Old Girl have got something worked out, never you worry.” 

“You got me off mornings?” Arthur asked hopefully, mood perking. 

“Well, no,” said Dutch. “Hosea’s pretty set on it, and I can’t say I disagree. If you and John wanna take a few swings at each other that’s your business, you’re grown men, but my boy, behind the bar? Really?”

“John started it,” Arthur growled. 

“You hit first, and you hit harder,” Dutch said. "And from what I hear John didn't hit you at all." His tone too took on a note Arthur had learned never to argue with. Arthur dropped his shoulders with a heavy sigh. Dutch squeezed his neck and let him go. 

“Take the next few days off,” Dutch advised. “Come ‘round the house this weekend. Molly’s got some harebrained idea to smoke a pig in the yard. Have some fun, get your head on straight, then come in on Monday and take your lumps like a man. Alright?” 

“Alright,” Arthur muttered. 

“You’ll be running deliveries, anyway,” Dutch said. “Hosea’s mad as hell but he ain’t stupid. Puttin’ you in front of the morning crowd is a recipe for disaster.” 

Arthur finally brightened at that. Deliveries weren’t so bad. “Can I take my bike?”

“Yeah, van’s still busted,” Dutch said, shaking his head. “Just don’t get pulled over on company time, okay?”

“I never get pulled over,” Arthur scoffed. He hadn’t been pulled over since he was twelve and taking a joyride in his foster father’s old Ford. 

“You are my most reliable son,” Dutch acknowledged. As always, his affection and his pride in Arthur made Arthur stand a little taller, his chin up and his chest warm. “Now go home, sleep it off, get your head on straight. I’ll see you Saturday, my place?” 

“Alright,” Arthur said. “Saturday.” 

_Deliveries I can do,_ Arthur thought, as he crossed the parking lot and swung a leg over his bike. _Deliveries are easy._

Mood a little improved, Arthur took the open road home, the wind and the stars pulling over him, washing his anger away.

\---

The weekend came and went. The pig roast at Dutch’s turned out alright, edible even once Mrs. Grimshaw got involved and kept the pig from burning. Usually such a task would have fallen to Pearson, but he’d been halfway down the bottle before the roast even started and had been no help whatsoever after Sadie slipped a few shots of rum into his battered tin mug, mostly to shut him up. 

Arthur would’ve told her off for it, because Sadie’s burning dislike for Pearson meant that if she got away with it once she’d try it again, and eventually try it with arsenic, but before he'd made his way over to her Sean showed up, fresh from Blackwater, and was more than happy to scuffle with Arthur around the bonfire. Arthur slept until nine on Sunday, muscles tired and hands sore, and Sunday afternoon he saddled up one of his horses and took her for a ride. 

He picked steady Reliance, a rosy grey Andalusian mare he had quite literally stumbled upon a few years ago out on the plains. Lia was even-tempered and even-keel. Not even Arthur’s black moods or a snake on the trail could spook her.

They had a good ride up in the mountain trails, tracking a few rabbits and listening to coyotes yap and yowl. Arthur was pretty sure he’d caught a flash of tawny fur high up in the trees, the fierce yellow gleam of a mountain cat’s eyes, but even though he tried to track her he never managed to get a good look, and he turned around before night could fall and the mountain lion could come down from her trees and track _him._

Monday rolled around quicker than Arthur would’ve liked, but he was determined to do as Dutch had asked and take his lumps, as they were, like a man. 

He rode into the shop the grey of the morning, parked his bike around the corner, and slipped into the kitchen quietly. Valentine had been still and silent coming in, the roads fresh and clear. It would not, he hoped, be a bad day for deliveries. 

Hosea was waiting for him in the kitchen while Molly and Mary-Beth chatted over a floured table, Molly kneading bread and Mary-Beth glazing muffins. The whole kitchen smelled homey and warm, familiar now after six years, and the early morning quiet, for once, didn’t leave Arthur woozy and unsettled. 

“Don’t get comfortable,” Hosea grunted. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, where a pair of blue duffel bags balanced precariously on top of a rickety old chair next to a paper cup of coffee, still warm enough that steam was curling up from the lid. 

Arthur softened at the sight of it. “Don’t worry, old man,” he said gruffly. “I ain’t gonna fight wit’ya. Where’m I goin’?” 

Hosea eyed Arthur dubiously but was willing enough to accept Arthur’s peace offering as an act of contrition. “You’ll be makin’ the usual runs, mostly,” he said. “There’s a list in the bag.” He hesitated. “Be careful, alright?”

Arthur smiled. “I’m always careful, Hosea,” he said. He opened the first bag up to fish out the list and check the contents; all the usual shit was there, packed in underneath bagels and muffins that had been packaged into neat little boxes, each labeled with the name of the client. Somebody’d bought a cake. The bottom of the first bag was made heavy by a few cases of beer, bottlecaps glinting in the kitchen lights. The second was much the same. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Arthur grunted. A normal day, then. All the right information was in the list, marked down in Hosea’s careful handwriting. 

Arthur hefted the bags with a heavy sigh. “Jesus Christ,” he grumbled. “Who ordered the bricks?” 

“That’d be a Mr. Haywood up in Roanoke County,” Hosea said, without batting an eye. “No funny business, Arthur. Call the shop if you need anything; I’m here ‘til eleven, and Dutch is in after me.” 

“Aye aye, boss,” Arthur said, offering a lazy salute, and he trooped back out into the morning light. 

Arthur wasn’t stupid enough to just throw the bags over the back of his bike--he’d done that before and squished the shit out of some cupcakes--so he spent a few minutes packing everything to his satisfaction, making sure his bike was balanced and that the more delicate boxes wouldn’t get crushed beneath the heavier. 

Finally, as the sun was just beginning to climb over the horizon, the sky pink and creamy, Arthur downed his cup of coffee and hit the road. 

He had six deliveries in Valentine proper. A bunch of ranch hands got a box of donuts each. The doctor, Ben something or other, got his usual order plus an extra case of beer. The butcher got a loaf of sourdough bread and the owner of the Saints Hotel, the butcher’s archnemesis, got a loaf of pumpernickel.

The gunsmith got his usual and even the local pastor, a suspicious old man who had never liked the look of Dutch’s boys, had put in for a box of muffins. 

Once he was done in Valentine, Arthur swung east and hit the usual spots, dropping deliveries off at Emerald Ranch and some odd little sod house in the plains before angling for the winding, wooded roads of Roanoke County.

Arthur didn’t come up this way much, not usually. New Hanover was a Midwestern state, all farm and field, but at least Arthur’s half of the state was more scrubland and steppe than the eastern, which was still stuck somewhere in the eighteen nineties and a little too much like rural Kentucky for Arthur’s tastes. 

Oh, the country itself was pretty enough, all hill and holler, handsome as a woman with flowers in her hair, but the locals left a little something to be desired. They were coal miners and shitkickers, mostly, some timbermen here and there, clannish and rude. And then there were the Murfrees to contend with, if Arthur were unlucky enough to wander past some. 

Arthur usually wasn’t lucky. 

Today, though, fortune smiled on him and the road to Van Horn was clear and Murfree-free. Arthur didn’t even spot any county police, which was rare; usually the county boys were all over Roanoke, lying in wait to catch people flying down the hills going forty over. 

But today there wasn’t a soul around so Arthur took his sweet time getting in to Van Horn, coasting slow and easy around the road’s twists and turns. Van Horn itself was a lot like Valentine, worn and rustic, only somehow seedier. Van Horn was all clapboard and dust, a relic from long ago, glory faded to a shitty biker bar and one battered main road, all the young folk gone away and all the old folk stewing in their cups.

Arthur’s guy, a Mr. Haywood who’d ordered a whole bag’s worth of shit all by himself, met Arthur behind the Old Light Saloon, Van Horn’s aforementioned shitty biker bar, and took his delivery with incongruous good humor. 

“All here?” he asked, rummaging through the bag excitedly. Mr. Haywood’s eyes lighted on a box of powdered donuts and made a happy sound. “No one ‘round here makes donuts like you folks do,” he said. 

Arthur grunted and took his payment, waving away Mr. Haywood’s proffered tip. “Ain’t nothin’,” he said. By now midmorning had come and gone. Van Horn was a good few hours past Valentine, a little far in Arthur’s opinion for a delivery, but he wasn’t the boss. If he left now, he’d make it to Valentine again in time for lunch and the end of his shift. 

“Thank you very much!” Mr. Haywood called, as Arthur ducked out of Old Light and made for his bike. “Be seein’ you again!” 

Arthur shook his head and swung a leg over his bike, kicking her to life again beneath him. He hoped that by the time Mr. Haywood put in for another order he’d be off the morning shift and back to his usual, but today hadn’t been so bad.

He left Van Horn behind, choosing to take the highway this time instead of meander his way back across the middle of the state, and let the rush of the open road pull him out of his thoughts and root him into his body. 

There was a reason Arthur had never bothered buying a car. Most of them had, when they’d settled in Valentine six years ago. Hosea’d bought a truck, Uncle’d bought a really shitty old station wagon, Bill’d bought a van as old as he was. Even John had caved, once he’d slunk back in six months ago, had thrown in the towel and bought an ancient, spluttering Jeep to keep Abigail off his back about “safe, reliable transportation.” 

But Arthur’d always hated cars and cabs. He couldn’t lose himself in the road in a truck or a Jeep, not like he could on his bike. On his bike Arthur had to be alert and calm. He had to pay attention to the way his bike moved underneath him, the weight of her, the steady grumble of her engines. 

_No open top or sunroof in the world can match this,_ he thought. The wind pulled at him, dragged through his hair and pulled at his leathers, wicked sweat away from his brow. Arthur had never been a praying man but he thought that if he were, he’d do it from the back of a Harley. 

He made it back to Valentine just a bit after noon, his heart calm and his temper more or less even, for once. 

_Dutch knows what he’s doing,_ Arthur realized, guiding his bike back into an opening parking spot ‘round the back of Lost Country. The Monday lunch crowd was thin, as always. The shop made most of its money with the morning rush and the evening crawl. 

Arthur still wasn’t too happy about being stuck on the morning shift for the indefinite future, but at least if he was on deliveries he’d get to ride, get to spend some time out on the road. He’d missed that the last six years. Dutch’s plans often made little sense to Arthur, but this one would do just fine. 

Mood considerably brighter than Arthur’d thought it would be, he shouldered his way into the back of the kitchen, made hungry by the road and the sun, and pilfered half a reuben off a plate he knew was Hosea’s. Tilly and Karen, who were in the kitchen working the ovens, noticed and shook their heads but neither told him off for it. 

Arthur tipped his hat at them, appreciating their complicity, and snagged himself some long-cold coffee too.

He was licking crumbs and thousand island dressing off his fingers when Hosea swept in, hair dusted with flour, and shot Arthur a stern glance. 

“Made it back alright?” he asked, arching a white eyebrow. “Any problems?”

“Yes and no,” Arthur said, answering Hosea’s questions in order. “Made the run fine, had no trouble. What're we doing deliverin’ all the way out to Van Horn? Not that I minded the ride,” Arthur added, rolling his shoulders. “Was easy enough gettin’ out there.” 

Hosea just shrugged. “Seems a bit far to me too, but Dutch’s got it in his head that we should expand our business a bit. Seems to think we ought to… how’d he put it, _franchise._ ”

Arthur snorted. That sounded like Dutch. 

Still, without Dutch’s intervention Arthur likely would have been forced to wait tables and mind the goddamn register for weeks on end, so Arthur wasn’t about to voice any of his doubts about the likelihood of franchising or whatever such nonsense Dutch had gotten into his head lately. 

They were making a decent living here in Valentine, all of them. Supporting a patchwork crew of twenty-odd folks had never been easy, but they were all doing alright. Arthur knew that some folks were picking up odd jobs here and there, supplementing their incomes with a day on this cattle ranch or a night in that feller’s bed, but nobody was starving and most everyone had a roof over their head, even Bill, who preferred the open air to the point where _his_ house was little more than a shack with a holey roof out in the sticks of some old, abandoned mining town down the road. 

Dutch’s people were doing well enough. They didn’t need to get involved in trying to rustle up business in Van Horn or Annesburg. Arthur could see _maybe_ branching out and getting a toehold in Emerald Ranch, but that was about it. Anything past that was plain foolishness or plain greed. 

But it wasn’t Arthur’s place to question Dutch’s grand ideas, especially not when Dutch had just done him a favor, so he only shrugged, licking the last of the reuben from his fingers, already turning his thoughts to his bed and a smoke. He was about done for the day. 

“You know me, Hosea,” Arthur said. “I just do what I’m told. If Dutch wants me runnin’ deliveries up in Van Horn, I don’t mind. ‘Specially not if folks are willin’ to pay. Just seems odd, is all.” 

Hosea huffed. “Odd is right,” he said. His expression softened. “Dutch has always been a bit odd, though, so I suppose we’ll have to live with it. You good to make a run tomorrow?” 

Arthur shrugged. The price of gas was cheap and he liked the road. “Sure,” he said. 

Hosea smiled wryly. “Don’t think actin’ all sweet and cheerful’s gonna get you out of this,” he warned. “You’re still on my shit list, boy.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. 

“And that sandwich was two-fifty,” Hosea said. “You can pay me out of the morning’s tips. Go split ‘em up for everybody--there’s five of us on this morning, and I don’t trust Sean to count.”

“Probably wise,” Arthur muttered. He did as he was told, ducking out of the kitchen into the bar and dining half of the shop, where Sean was lounging against the register, plainly ogling one of the shop’s few customers, a pretty, rangy girl who Arthur knew made her money hooking on the weekends. 

Arthur whacked Sean upside the head, very gently. No need to draw Hosea’s ire by whacking Sean as hard as he deserved, after all. 

“MacGuire,” Arthur growled. “You ain’t paid to laze about starin’ at women. Go find something to clean.” 

“Aw, Arthur,” Sean whined, rubbing the back of his head theatrically. “Whatcha do that fer? I weren’t harmin’ nobody, just doin’ a bit of lookin’ is all.” Sean was one of the younger lads, a boy of twenty-two or twenty-three--he’d hooked up with Dutch and his band of misfits only a few months after they’d all settled in Valentine and thought that the few barfights he’d gotten into at Arthur’s side made him a man. 

Really Sean was just an annoyance, but Arthur did like him, most of the time. He wasn’t sure exactly what chain of calamitous events had to have occurred for a scrappy Irish kid to end up in a cattle town in the American Midwest, but Arthur had a decent enough grasp of current events to guess. Sean did have an alarming fondness for anything that could be set on fire and he ate up Dutch’s anarcho-syndicalist shit with a spoon.

“Look on your own time,” said Arthur. He gave Sean the gimlet eye but Sean just smiled blithely at him, too used to Arthur’s cuffing and scuffing to be that bothered. 

_Idiot kid,_ Arthur thought, without any ire. He checked Sean aside with a hip and the wave of a hand, reaching for the tip jar that was happily full, despite the fact that there were only three paying customers in Lost Country.

“Hey, whatcha doin’ with those?” Sean said indignantly, making a grab for the jar. Arthur just turned his back, aware that he had about five inches and fifty pounds on Sean, who was built like a particularly ugly reed.

“Countin’ ‘em,” Arthur said. He emptied the jar on the counter, separating the bills from the coins with a practiced motion, beginning to sort it all out into five piles. 

“I don’t know where you get off think yer gonna get any! _You’ve_ been out ridin’ around all day, sittin’ on yer arse, while me an’ the girls’ve been workin’ ourselves to the bone.” 

“Yeah,” Arthur said, head coming up from his counting to take a dramatic look around the empty shop, “real busy, I can see that.” 

“C’mon,” Sean whined. 

Arthur shook his head. “Tips get split even between everyone who’s on shift,” he said. “That’s the way it’s always been, an’ the fact that you ain’t caught on yet is probably while I’m out here doin’ this shit, not you.” 

Sean scowled.

“Here,” Arthur said, feeling uncharacteristically generous, “we’ve got an extra quarter that I ain’t wanna split. It’s all yours.” 

“Gee thanks,” Sean said, “a whole bloody twenty-five cents--” 

“That Tilly gets now, since you’re gonna be a shit about it,” said Arthur, throwing the extra quarter into the pile he’d set aside for Tilly.

“Arsehole,” Sean grumbled, but he knew better than to push things any further. Arthur took splitting tips very seriously, since most of them had rents and mortgages and shit to worry about now. Sean lived with whoever had an open couch and mostly paid his way in beer. 

“Look, you made nearly fifteen bucks this mornin’,” Arthur said, pushing Sean’s portion towards the brat. “Ain’t bad for a mornin’a jus' lookin’, is it?” 

He did not put an extra two-fifty in Hosea’s pile, because the old man never finished his sandwiches anyway and Arthur didn’t want to be _too_ obliging and obedient--Hosea might start to think that Arthur was sick or something, and if there was anything worse than Hosea’s scolding it was Hosea’s mothering.

“Yeah, that’s not bad,” said Sean, brightening considerably. “Worth a few beers at least.” 

Arthur snorted, pocketing his own portion. “That’s the spirit,” he said. “Now g’wan, git. Go clean somethin’. I’ll watch the register for,” he checked the clock behind the bar, “five minutes.” 

Sean miraculously did as he was told, no doubt imagining all of the shitty pints of watery beer he’d buy with his fifteen whole dollars. Arthur took his place at the register, leaning on the counter a bit to take the pressure of his knees. 

_I’m gettin’ old,_ he thought, not for the first time in the last few months. _Christ, I feel like a cowboy._ Aching and sore before his time, his joints battered from a lifetime of falling and brawling, his back tight from days in the saddle or on his bike, nights folded up on his lumpy mattress. He straightened up, rolled his shoulders back and tried to stretch even though he felt it make his shirt ride up, exposing a strip of skin at his belly.

Arthur was midstretch when the bell over the door chimed and the handsome trucker with the sweet tooth walked in. 

Arthur froze. The trucker went still. 

They stared at each other. 

_He looks better,_ Arthur thought, unable to stop himself from noticing that between last week and today, the trucker’d managed to get at least a few good nights of sleep in. He was less worn, less ragged and smudged around the edges--his hair was still long and pulled back into a loose tail and his eyes were still smudged beneath with tired shadows, but his back was straight and his clothes were clean, his jeans tucked into his boots and his shirt free of oil stains.

 _And I, of course, look like an idiot,_ Arthur realized, flushing hard. He dropped his arms and hastily tugged at his shirt, praying that he was too sunburned and wind-chapped for the feller to notice that Arthur had blushed like a schoolboy confronted with his first pair of tits. 

_No,_ he told himself sternly, because thinking of tits--or the trucker’s chest, which was much broader in this clean, neat-fitting tee-shirt than it had been in the shapeless thing the trucker’d had on last time--was not going to help him appear like a functional man. 

The trucker was still standing stock still in the doorway, his eyes wide. 

Arthur cleared his throat. “Uh, c’mon--c’mon in,” he said. “Uh, welcome. To Lost Country,” Arthur clarified, resisting the urge to lock up all his joints and add the _Brewing Company, Ell-Ell-Goddamn-Cee_ at the end like he and the boys did when they were drunk and stupid. 

“Good afternoon,” the trucker said warily, stepping fully inside the shop, his dark eyes fixed on Arthur’s. He had a round, boyish kind of face, a wide mouth, a nose that was just the slightest bit crooked. 

“Hi,” said Arthur, unnecessarily. He cleared his throat again. “What can I getcha?” 

The trucker approached the counter very slowly, moving like he half expected Arthur to bounce over the counter and start hurling bottles of caramel sauce at him. “I’d like a latte,” the trucker said. He didn’t take his eyes off Arthur’s face. “With some caramel sauce added, please.” 

“A latte,” Arthur repeated. “Can do, mister. That’ll be, uh,” he checked the price list surreptitiously, “two-ninety.” 

He took his eyes off the trucker, his blush mostly faded by now, and bustled about. He could make a latte. He could even add caramel sauce--he maybe added a bit more than he was supposed to, but he didn’t think that the feller would mind that much. 

There were two dollars and ninety cents on the counter when he returned with the feller’s drink. 

“Here ya go,” said Arthur, swapping the latte for the cash. He wanted to watch the guy drink it but thought that might be a bit weird, so he made himself look away and put the money in the register while the guy took a very cautious sip out of the corner of Arthur’s eye. 

The trucker’s expression cleared, his concern over another insane interaction quickly replaced by pleasure over a decent cup of coffee.

Arthur hid a smile, pleased. 

“This is good,” the trucker said. 

Arthur did smile now, figuring it was safe to do so. “I can figure the machines out after I’ve had a few cups of coffee myself,” he said. “Mornings are, uh. A little difficult.”

The trucker smiled back. He had a nice smile, wide and honest, and another tug of attraction stirred in Arthur’s gut. He didn’t know what it was, exactly--attraction was something hat just happened to Arthur sometimes, entirely random and fairly rare. He’d never really had a _type,_ as far as he could tell. Just, occasionally, he’d look over at someone and he’d want to get to know them. To be near them. 

He wanted to get to know this feller. 

“I can’t say much,” the trucker said, taking another sip of his coffee. “Usually I can’t string more than a few words together before ten o’clock, ‘less I get some sugar in me.” 

“I’m Arthur,” Arthur said. He gestured around the shop. “Usually I work nights. The morning shift’s not my usual, uh, grind.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he winced-- _terrible,_ grind, _really, Morgan?_ \--but the trucker huffed a chuckle. 

“Charles,” he said. “I work all hours, but the hotel up the road’s pretty much the only place to catch a few hours of sleep and a hot shower between here and Blackwater, so. I’m in a lot, I guess.” 

“Well, nice to meet ya,” Arthur said, determined to have a normal goddamn interaction and not chase the poor trucker--Charles, his name was Charles--away. “I’m on mornings for the foreseeable, so I’m sure I’ll see ya around.” 

“Yeah,” Charles said, taking another happy sip of his coffee, “see ya. Have a good one.” He waved and turned to leave, holding his latte in one big, broad hand. Arthur held very still until the feller’d left the shop, crossed the parking lot and vanished from sight. He was not about to turn around and trip over a loose mat or something, or open his mouth, or do _anything_ at _all_ that would make Arthur look like more of an idiot that Charles already thought he was. 

Sean took that opportunity to appear at Arthur’s elbow, grinning widely. 

“So, Arthur,” he trilled. “Whatever happened to lookin’ on yer own time, eh? Not that I can blame you, with a big, beefy fella like that, Christ above, but really, man. If you stared at him any harder he was gonna burst inta flames!” 

Arthur didn’t hit him, but it was a close thing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS:
> 
> Mild language, mild violence, mild blood. Mentions of injury. Mentions of alcoholism. Alcohol will be present throughout. Vague mentions of Arthur's rather unhappy childhood. A lot of horses.
> 
> I have A LOT of notes so at the risk of infodumping where it's not wanted or spoiling anything too early, I will hold off on my notes 'til the end. If you have a specific question, though, please drop a line in the comments and I will dump happily away!
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Update: This fic now has [art!](https://emi-illustrates.tumblr.com/post/626722452240777217/hey-yall-pls-do-yourself-a-favor-and-read-lost) Many thanks to the lovely emi-illustrates over on tumblr for their work!


	2. lost country: ii

Arthur didn’t see Charles the long-haul trucker for over a week after that. In fact, Arthur's next week was pretty much all shit. The easy peace he’d managed to find on his first day spent running deliveries quickly evaporated. Summer heat, usually only brutal in July and August, rolled in several weeks early, baking Valentine into a hard, hot, dusty hellscape, and Sean was quick to spread word of Arthur’s stuttering and stammering far and wide.

Between the rising temperature and the rising mockery--most of it good-natured, as the vast majority of Dutch’s people had been around long enough to know Arthur’s various and sundry peculiarities--Arthur’s calm, even mood evaporated, and by the first few days of his second week on the morning shift Arthur had sunk so deep into his own black temper as to be mostly nonverbal. 

It wasn’t that anybody was throwing around slurs or anything like that. Dutch didn’t tolerate that kind of shit among his people and most of their crew had a few oddities and irregularities of their own. Most of them didn’t care who Arthur did or didn’t fuck--Arthur taking a roll in the sheets with anybody, woman or man, was a rare enough occurrence that most of his friends were just happy for him, or maybe a little hopeful that a good fuck would mellow him out some. 

Despite most of friends' easy acceptance, there were a few exceptions to the rule. 

Micah, predictably, had some kind of stick up his ass about Arthur apparently being sweet on a man. Micah spent the next few days giving Arthur pinch-faced, sour-mouthed looks whenever he thought nobody was looking and making sure that he never had his back turned on Arthur, up until Arthur pointed out that he found Micah about as attractive as a rabid opossum. Then Micah just got mad.

Bill too was--weird about it all, half-derisive and half-desperate, shooting Arthur strange looks over his cup of whiskey. Arthur couldn't tell if Bill was disgusted or just plain jealous. But regardless of their personal feelings on the matter of Arthur's proclivities, neither Bill nor Micah were stupid enough to say anything too derogatory where Dutch or Arthur could hear. Dutch would give anybody he caught being shitty about Arthur’s choice of bed partners a lecture and a month’s worth of scut work, and Arthur’d give anybody _he_ caught a broken fucking nose. 

Not even Micah wanted to risk baiting Arthur too far, so in addition to being on edge and miserable in the heat Arthur wasn't even able to snatch a few hours’ worth of the relief that came with beating somebody senseless. 

By the time Arthur saw Charles again, a full week after their second, surprisingly less-disastrous meeting, Arthur was meaner than a mountain lion and as bristly as a bear. The heat, his frustration and the looming holiday--Memorial Day, Arthur’s absolute least favorite day of the year--left Arthur feeling both too big and too small for his body at the same time. He was hot and cold by turns and his jaw ached from clenching it all goddamn day. Only nicotine and the road were getting him through it, cigarettes and the freedom of being able to swing a leg over his bike and ride for hours at a time, all over New Hanover, up and down West Elizabeth, deep into the mountains near his home. Arthur clung to those fragile hours of uneasy calm with both hands. 

And then, of course, even the road turned on him. 

It was Tuesday and hotter than the Devil’s asshole, heat hanging over the road like an anvil. Arthur was on a run to Strawberry loaded up with deliveries and the heat was so strong he could hardly see the road through the sweat in his eyes and the haze coming up off the asphalt. 

He got about ten miles down the road in that heat, feeling half like he was swimming through soup and half like he was going to keel over and die, when his bike heaved a great coughing groan, spitting oily black smoke, and gave up beneath him. 

Arthur swore and narrowly managed to avoid laying her down there on the overheated asphalt. He wobbled dangerously, struggling to hold his balance on a guttering engine. Smoke stung his nose and his eyes as he eased off the road and guided his bike to the shoulder, finally coming to a wobbly stop a few hundred yards from where his engine had gone out. 

He peeled himself off his seat, swearing loudly. He knew from the color of that smoke, from the stink of it, that he wasn’t riding off this road on his own. 

“Son of a bitch,” Arthur hissed, dragging a hand through his hair. Spikes of it stuck straight up, slick with sweat, and he’s already feeling dizzy with the heat, his mouth dry, an unpleasant, sticky flush building in the skin of his throat and his chest. 

He nudged his poor old bike with the toe of his boot, half-hopeful. He could feel the heat coming off the engine through his boot leather. Dark fluid dripped from beneath it, sizzling on the asphalt and leaving faint traces of iridescence shimmering on the ground. _Damn fuel line._ Arthur grimaced, well and truly fucked now, and shaded his eyes. 

Valentine was ten miles behind him somewhere in the thick reddish haze going east. Strawberry was even farther, all the way across the Dakota River and the state line, nestled at the narrow feet of Mount Shahn. The only things between Arthur and the river were a few old settlements that had been empty for a century and a half, places that were rotting and falling down, home only to wild animals and wilder folk, the people like Bill who couldn’t even bear to live in a shitheap like Valentine. Most of them were squatters and recluses, a few hippies or eco-freaks, and all of them were unfriendly.

Arthur didn’t particularly want to deal with any of them, the animals or the people. Mountain lions would absolutely chew on his dumb ass and anybody he stumbled on was as likely to shoot him for trespassing as to let him use their phone, assuming they even had one. Arthur’d probably have better luck lighting shit on fire and waiting for the staties to come sniffing around. 

_Arson comes with some pretty serious jail time,_ he reminded himself, _and it’s too fucking hot anyway._ Arthur had spent a few months in juvie as a kid and while it hadn’t been a picnic, he'd survived it fine. He'd gotten a few scars from this time there, but nothing worse than that. Juvie and the state pen were different animals, though, and Arthur'd never been inside a real prison. 

_If I get my dumb ass arrested, Hosea'll kill me._ Arthur didn’t think there was much money left in Dutch’s emergency fund to bail him out either, and food in jail sucked. So arranging rescue by arson was out, as was smashing his way into the first house he came across looking for a phone. 

Arthur ground his teeth, jaw burning, and took stock of his situation.

Given that he’d only been making a delivery run, Arthur was travelling pretty light. He had only the deliveries themselves, packed away and probably half-melted by now, a few band-aids, a few shots of liquor, a couple of spare bolts and a Glock. 

He took a slug of the liquor, some kind of hot, stinging cinnamon-flavored whiskey that tasted like a blackout and bad decisions, mostly because if Arthur died out here on this shitty fucking highway he wasn’t about to do it sober, tucked the band-aids into one of his pockets, and took the Glock. 

He examined the gun dubiously. It was in good shape. Arthur took good care of his guns. All of the Glock's parts and pieces were clean and oiled, the safety on, pins checked, the whole nine. Despite that, the damn thing was most likely going to be useless.

Arthur wasn’t a bad shot by any means, but he preferred long guns and he’d been living soft for years now. He wasn’t all that confident he could fend off much with the Glock, made even less confident by the fact that he had exactly two rounds in it, but still. It was better than nothing.

Resigning himself to a very long, very hot morning, Arthur dragged his bike off the shoulder, panting with effort, and hid her as best he could down among the weeds that grew thick and ugly over most Midwestern highways. He wasn’t about to hike his sorry ass over to Valentine and then come back later to find all his shit stolen. His bike was in good shape--she was a '65 Panhead, all black, and Arthur had always taken good care of her too. 

Once his bike was mostly hidden, because there was nothing else left to do, Arthur turned back the way he’d come and started walking towards Valentine, hating everything just a little more with every single step that he took. 

_Of course it’s gotta be one hundred an' fuckin’ seven degrees in goddamn May,_ Arthur thought venomously, forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other with mindless intent. He didn’t bother trying to wave down another driver even as a few shrieked past, the wind displaced by their cars and their trucks a brief, welcome moment of coolness before the stifling heat returned. 

Arthur wasn’t the kind of guy most folks were willing to pick up. He was big, tall and broad-shouldered, deep in the chest, and he was mean. His nose had been broken too many times over the years for him to look anything but. He’d even looked mean as a kid, his nose crooked, flat at the bridge, one or both of his eyes always blackened, his face and his hands scarred up like a tomcat’s ears. 

It didn’t bother Arthur too much any more. Hell, it had been damn useful to look mean as a kid. Back then he hadn’t been tall or broad-shouldered. He’d been reedy, undersized, his eyes and his ears too big for his face. He’d had more than his share of trouble at Pine Hills before he’d had his nose broken a few times, before he’d split his chin open on another kid’s teeth and put that kid in the infirmary. Once he’d healed up, his nose set at an odd lumpy angle, he’d been able to scare most of the others who’d wanted to give him trouble away. Looking mean had saved his ass. Looking mean hadn't served him too badly in the years since, either. 

_Does make it hard to hitchhike, though,_ Arthur thought. He was already regretting the slug of whiskey, which sat in his belly like a hot, sour stone. He should’ve grabbed some doughnuts or something out of his bags. At this rate he was going to wear himself out before he got within five miles of Valentine, lie down on the side of the highway and expire, like milk left out in the sun. 

He could hear Dutch and Hosea bickering about it now. The pair of them liked to gamble on the rest of the crew like old women betting on fighting cocks at the market. 

" _Naw, Dutch, Arthur can make it seven miles, at least,_ " Hosea would say. 

" _In this heat?_ " Dutch would say back, shaking his head somberly, like an asshole. " _No, in this heat, I'll bet you ten dollars he only makes it four."_

The fact that Arthur was half-hallucinating already was probably not a good sign. He put Dutch and Hosea out of his head and persevered. 

Arthur did manage to make it maybe a mile and a half down the road, fifteen or twenty minutes of walking and cursing and wishing that he’d never picked a fight with John in the first place and gotten himself stuck in this godforsaken shitheap of a situation, when Arthur heard the low, earth-shaking rumble of an eighteen-wheeler bearing down and turned around. 

He shaded his eyes against the sun, wondering if he was about to be run over, which would about keep in line with the rest of his shitty, shitty day, and found himself looking up at Charles the trucker, who was guiding his rig over to the shoulder with his hazard lights flashing, one brown arm hanging out the window. The cab was blue, the trailer grey and silver, and there was a stylized horse painted in blue and grey racing across the cab’s broad, blunt nose.

Charles cut the engine and stuck his head out the window. “Hey,” he said. “You need a ride?”

Arthur honestly would have preferred to die of heatstroke on the way back into Valentine, lingering embarrassment from his two previous interactions with Charles strong in the back of his mouth, but he knew better than to think that he’d get off that easy. 

“Sure,” Arthur said, and got into the cab.

Arthur’d been in a few big rigs before. He and John had stolen one once years ago, just for fun, and every now and then an abandoned cab could be found out in the high plains of New Hanover or the scrub deserts of New Austin, left to rust away in the sun. Arthur had always liked poking his head into those kinds of places. He liked to be the one to uncover something, a secret or a memory, and keep those secrets to himself like a magpie with a shiny coin. 

Charles's cab wasn’t like that, though, a half-forgotten thing thick with dust and dirt, and it wasn’t like the rig Arthur and John had boosted as stupid kids in Colorado either. Charles's cab was lived in but obviously well-cared for. The usual trucker detritus--fast food wrappers and cigarette butts, soda cans and wadded clothes--was confined to a box wedged beneath Charles's seat. The leather of the seats was worn and cracked but not peeling and the usual trucker stink, a particularly lovely combination of stale sweat, more fast food and what Hosea called _eau de lot lizard,_ was absent. 

In fact, Arthur realized, his dizziness returning, the cabin smelled… nice. Clean, as if Charles had just had everything detailed, with just the faintest scent of skin and soap.

“What happened?” Charles asked, peering at Arthur with some concern. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you don’t look so good.”

“Bike died on me, ‘bout a mile back,” Arthur grunted. Charles offered him a bottle of water--tepid, and just about the best goddamn water that Arthur had ever tasted--and frowned. 

“Did it overheat?”

“Yeah,” Arthur said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He felt unbelievably filthy, sweaty and dusty and probably stinking to high heaven. He bit back a sigh. There was nothing to be done for it. “Coughed an' gave up on the shoulder. Problem with the fuel line, I think. ‘S my own damn fault, I was late comin’ in this mornin’ an' didn’t get out on the road ‘til it was already hotter than--” he stopped himself from saying something rude, cleared his throat. “Hot,” he finished, kind of lamely. 

“You need to get back to Valentine?” Charles asked. 

Arthur nodded. “If you’re goin’ that way, anyway. You can let me out anywhere. I just need a phone, Hosea’s got a truck.”

“Hosea?” Charles asked, easing back out onto the highway. The road was empty and Charles, to Arthur’s surprise, maneuvered his rig around in a big wide u-turn and started heading west, towards Strawberry.

“Uh, yeah, my--well, I guess you could call him my father,” said Arthur. 

“He work at the coffee shop?” 

“Yeah,” Arthur said. “He’s the old feller, the skinny one.” 

“Mister Matthews,” Charles said, putting two and two together. “The owner?” 

“Part-owner,” Arthur clarified, “but yeah, that’s him.” He paused. “He make you call him Mister Matthews? ‘Cause he ain’t a _mister_ anything. He’s an old conman who likes to give himself delusions of grandeur.”

“He said the same thing to me,” Charles said, mouth pulling up in a half-smile. “But my mama taught me to be polite to the people who make my food.”

“Probably good advice,” Arthur admitted. He didn’t mind heading over towards Strawberry. Strawberry was a backwards-ass place but they did have a pay phone out in front of their post office. 

“So does that make you Arthur Matthews?” 

“What? Oh, naw, I’m--well,” Arthur said, hesitating reflexively, out of many long years of habit. “Well, technically I’m Arthur van der Linde. Dutch--the other owner, he’s my father. I’m adopted,” he clarified, flushing. He always made such a mess of this when people asked, which was why Arthur tried to cultivate the impression, with his big hands and his broad shoulders and his mean, flat-eyed face, that no one should ask. 

Charles clearly wasn’t phased by Arthur’s big hands or his broad shoulders, though--he was of a size with Arthur, and Arthur noticed the scars on Charles's knuckles that told him Charles could probably punch just as hard--and he wasn’t put off by Arthur’s stammering either. 

Charles tilted his head thoughtfully. “Is Dutch the dark-haired one?” he asked. "Always talking?"

Arthur nodded. “Yeah, he’s my height, black hair, wears that stupid little mustache? He mostly works nights. Hosea works mornings. They’re not--they’re old friends, Dutch an’ Hosea. Hosea half raised me.”

“Hm,” said Charles. Even though the noise was noncommittal, Arthur knew it to be a sound of interest instead of one of dismissal. He’d never been that good with people, had been too wild as a boy to learn how to manage folks properly, but there was a light in Charles’s eyes as he listened to Arthur talk that Arthur could see, bright and honest. “What were you doin’ out here in this heat? Working?”

“Running deliveries over to Strawberry,” Arthur said, grateful that he didn’t have to attempt to explain his odd family situation any further. Hosea and Dutch could make the whole arrangement sound natural, but Arthur always managed to make a mess of explaining it. Arthur paused, then swore. “Guess I’m gonna have to give folks some free fuckin’ doughnuts. Ain’t no way we’re getting anything delivered today.” He’d had a full load of shit, too, which probably had contributed to his bike choking up on the road. Too much strain in too much heat. 

Charles chuckled. He began to ease his rig back over onto the shoulder. 

“What’re you doin’?” Arthur asked, frowning. 

Charles lifted an eyebrow at him. “This is about where your bike gave up, right? Where is it?”

Arthur blinked. 

“My trailer’s empty,” Charles clarified, finally catching on to the fact that Arthur was an idiot who needed things explained to him with small, precise words. “I just dropped off a load in Blackwater. I’m in Valentine overnight, then off to Illinois in the morning to pick up the next batch. I can haul your bike into the coffee shop for you, save you another trip out here in this heat.” 

“Oh,” Arthur said, still blinking. Charles’s kindness had caught him off guard, left Arthur flat-footed. He scanned the stretch of highway briefly. Charles was actually pretty close to where Arthur’d stashed his bike, only a few dozen yards back from the snarl of weeds Arthur had tugged up to cover her. The road shimmered with heat.

“Uh, thank you,” said Arthur, off-balance. Strangers usually didn't have much kindness to spare for somebody like Arthur, and he wasn't entirely sure how to manage Charles's. “It’s about another fifty yards.” He gestured to the shoulder with his chin, to the dense tangles of weeds that more or less hid his Harley from prying eyes. From this high up on the shoulder he could just barely see the dull gleam of an exhaust pipe, but from car height she was nearly invisible. Only the faint, lingering smell of exhaust and ozone, hanging trapped in the heat, betrayed Arthur’s bike.

Charles hummed and nudged his rig up to the tangle of weeds and then just past, swinging hard on the steering while to get as close to the weeds as he could before cutting his engine and hopping down out of the cab. Arthur followed, still a little bewildered. 

“I’ll get the trailer open,” Charles said.

“Sure,” Arthur agreed. He hesitated. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Charles’s kindness, but, well. Folks were very rarely kind to sour-faced strangers out of the goodness of their hearts. “Look, you ain’t have to help me out like this. I wouldn’t want you to get in some kind of trouble or nothin’ on account’a me an’ my shitty old bike. Hosea’s got a truck. We can come back an’ get it later.”

“Are you saying you want to leave all your shit out here to bake in the sun?” Charles asked, amused. He got the trailer open and a ramp down with practiced ease, the metal hitting the asphalt with a scrape and a flash of hot sparks. 

“Well, no,” Arthur said. He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Probably wouldn’t help her any, sitting out here in the heat. But your bosses ain’t gonna be mad ‘bout you haulin’ my bike around?” 

Charles gave him a wordless shrug. “They probably wouldn’t, but it’s not like they’ll find out anyway. The nearest chicken coop’s on the other side of Valentine, and it’s only for a few miles to Lost Country. We’ll have you back and unloaded before I have to measure up heading out of town.” 

“Alright then,” Arthur said, gruffly. “If you’re sure. And, uh, thanks.” 

Charles waved him off and Arthur got down in the weeds, clearing them off his bike. He hauled her upright, grunting at the effort of it--all this country living was making Arthur soft--and when Charles joined him they were able to haul it between them out of the weeds, onto the shoulder, up the ramp and finally into Charles'struck. 

By the time they were done, the bike strapped down with yellow ratchet straps, the trailer closed and locked again, Arthur was drenched in sweat and flushed with the effort. Charles wasn’t quite as flushed, but sweat beaded his brow and he took his cap off, shaking out his long hair, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Jesus, that was heavy,” Charles said. “What is that think made out of, lead?” 

Arthur laughed. “No,” he said. “But I ain’t made any deliveries yet. You know how many muffins I got packed in that thing?”

Charles huffed a laugh and the pair of them clamored back into the cab, though Arthur paused at the door to shake himself off like a wet dog and take a surreptitious sniff, trying to determine whether or not he was too rank for decent company. 

_Probably am,_ he thought, grimacing, but there wasn’t much for it. He climbed in, got himself buckled, and tried to angle his body towards the open window, also as carefully and quietly as possible. Charles’s rig rumbled to life again, coughing exhaust, and Charles pulled another u-turn once the coast was clear, cutting neatly across the highway and angling them towards Valentine. 

“What d’you haul, mostly?” Arthur asked, once they were a little cooler and well on their way back. The wind coming in through the windows was a blessing. 

“All kinds,” said Charles. “Though lately it’s mostly been lumber, a little steel, some pre-cut bricks. Blackwater’s expanding and it seems like everyone wants to put up a house or a storefront or a bank.”

“Is that your usual run? Illinois to Blackwater an' back?”

“No, actually,” Charles said. If he was bothered by Arthur’s questions, he didn’t show it. “I’m based out of South Dakota. Usually run across Montana to the Pacific Coast. The Illinois run is pretty new.” 

“And Valentine’s your preferred stop out here?”

Charles shrugged. “It’s as good a place as any. Why?” he asked, when Arthur snorted derisively. 

“Valentine’s a shithole,” Arthur said. “Really, it’s got nothing but sheep shit, cow shit, an’ dumb touristy bull-shit.” 

“Why do you live there, then?” Again, despite Charles’s words, there was no hostility or bite to his voice. He mostly just sounded curious, as if he really wanted to know. That light was back in his dark eyes. 

So Arthur told him. “I don’t live there,” he said. “I’m over the state line in Ambarino. Valentine’s just... Well, it’s where we all ended up, I guess. Dutch an’ Hosea an’ me an’ the rest. Some of us do live there, for some godawful reason--Dutch does, an’ most of the girls--but for me it’s just where I work.”

Arthur rubbed the back of his neck again, self-conscious. He didn’t know why he wanted to share any of this with Charles--he didn’t _know_ Charles. Charles was just some feller Arthur’d made coffee for a few times, a feller he’d embarrassed himself in front of and now a feller he owed for stopping and helping Arthur out of a bad spot. He didn’t like owing folks, usually. Debts had a tendency to get messy. 

Charles cocked his head. “Where in Ambarino?”

“I’ve got a few dozen acres a bit east of Cotorra Springs, up in the mountains,” Arthur said. He cleared his throat, self-consciousness rising. “It’s, uh, it’s not much, but it’s enough for me an’ the horses.”

Charles visibly perked up, taking his eyes off the road long enough to meet Arthur’s. His eyes were very dark and very intelligent, and their intensity caught Arthur out again, leaving him off-balance and unsteady, like he'd just taken a sharp blow to the ear. “Horses?” Charles asked. “You ride?”

“I do,” Arthur said, grasping at the common ground like a drowning man grabbed for shore, and from there the conversation flowed more easily. Charles apparently loved to ride and had a horse of his own back in the Dakotas, a pretty thing he called Taima. He kept a picture of her tucked up on his dashboard and showed it to Arthur with beaming pride. 

“She’s real pretty,” said Arthur admiringly. He’d never managed to get his hands on an appaloosa, already overrun with thoroughbreds and Arabians and mongrel half-mule half-mustangs, or whatever Hemingway was, but Taima was a real looker. She looked almost roan in Charles's picture, white across her withers and down to her rump, flecked here and there with dark spots. Arthur'd never seen an appy that looked quite like her; all the ones he'd seen on the ranches down in the Heartlands or up in the cattle country of Ambarino were leopards or leopard blankets. Taima wasn't quite either of those. 

Arthur gave the picture back and told Charles about Buell, Arthur's first horse, and his more-or-less accidental acquisition, then of the others as they’d come to Arthur--Reliance found wandering the prairie flats, Lyra and Rooster lifted from a godawful rancher who’d thought that the best way to gain a horse’s obedience was to starve it senseless, Hemingway who’d come from a slaughter pen and wily Blue who’s owner, like Buell’s Hamish, had died without giving him anywhere else to go. 

Charles whistled an impressed breath as they pulled into Valentine. The roads were thick with dust and Lost County was just barely visible through the haze, perched right off the highway to catch both locals coming in after work and passersby desperate for a drink or a bite to eat. 

“That sounds like a full-time job,” Charles said. 

Arthur shrugged. “Ain’t too bad,” he replied. “The horses are a fair bit of work, yeah, but I don’t mind ‘em. I like to keep busy.” 

Charles smiled. “I got that impression,” he said. He eased his rig off the highway and parked it at the back of Lost Country’s lot, the rig taking up nearly a dozen faded parking spaces. 

“Come on in,” Arthur invited, hauling himself out of the cab. “I’ll get the other boys to help me get my bike down. You’ve done enough. Have a cup of coffee or somethin’, cool off in the ay-cee.”

“I can help,” Charles said, but Arthur waved him down. 

“You’ve done more’n enough,” he said firmly. “And it’s only midday--those idiots in there ain’t got nothin’ better to do, an’ a bit of honest work won’t kill ‘em. Might even build some character--god knows Marston's never done an honest day's work in his life. G’wan, git. I’m right behind you.”

Charles held his hands up in tacit surrender, his only concession stopping to unlock the trailer before Arthur herded him towards the storefront. 

Arthur shouldered the door open and ushered Charles inside, careful not to touch him, his hand hovering a few scant inches from the small of Charles's back. Being so close to Charles made Arthur's heart beat faster. His mouth was dry. 

_Hope the sunburn hides the blushing,_ Arthur grumbled to himself, feeling like a teenager. John and Javier were both in today, Javier minding the register with a book in his hand while John made a show of sweeping up around the tables, his stupid scarred face slack with disinterest.

Arthur narrowed his eyes, his attraction to Charles momentarily forgotten. The damn broom wasn’t even touching the floor. 

“Hey, assholes,” Arthur said. Javier looked up from his book--some faded, leatherbound thing that looked like it had been lifted straight out of Dutch’s little library, the title stamped on the in flaking gold--and John’s head came up too. The bruises around his eyes had mostly faded by now, though his nose was still a bit swollen and his upper lip had scabbed over. He looked a fright, honestly, but Arthur couldn't bring himself to feel too bad about it. John caught sight of Charles, and Arthur with Charles, and Arthur’s hand hovering just above Charles's back, almost touching but not quite, and broke out into a wide grin. 

“Don’t start with me,” Arthur hissed at him, narrowing his eyes and trying to both promise John violence and appear normal and sane to Charles at the same time. “I got work for you. You too, Javier.” 

“Sure,” Javier said easily, stretching a bit. He flashed Charles a bright grin. Javier was at ease around strange people, a skill Arthur desperately wished he’d been able to pick up as a boy before he’d gotten set in his surly ways, and in turn most people tended to be at ease around Javier. “What do you need, Arthur?”

“My bike gave out on me,” Arthur grunted. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the parking lot. “Charles here was kind enough to give me a ride. Bike’s in his rig. I’m gonna need help gettin’ her down.” 

“No problem,” Javier said. “We don’t mind, right, John?”

“We mind a little,” John objected. “It’s hot as shit out there.” 

Arthur bared his teeth at John. “Three sets of hands’ll make it go quick,” he said. “An’ I ain’t askin’.” 

“Don’t worry about it, Arthur,” said Javier, coming out from behind the counter to hook an arm over John’s neck, hauling him all friendly-like, but with a grip as strong as steel, out the front. “Why don’t you hop behind the bar and get something to drink? You and your friend here.”

“Charles,” Charles put in helpfully. “Charles Smith.” 

“I’m Javier.” Javier flashed Charles another blinding smile and Arthur’s hackles went up, alarmed. As far as he knew Javier preferred women but Arthur’d seen him make eyes at men a time or two, and he was under no illusion which of the two of them would be the better catch. Javier was clever and funny and interesting. He read voraciously. He could play the guitar _and_ sing.

The only singing Arthur did tended to scare dogs and small children, and Arthur spent too much time in his own head to be that funny or witty. 

“This is John,” Javier added, using his grip on John to shake him a bit. John wriggled but couldn't break loose. Arthur's affection for Javier ratcheted up a notch, even if Javier _was_ making eyes at Charles. “We’re Arthur’s brothers.” 

John huffed at the designation--he hadn’t taken to being adopted as well as Arthur had, and Javier had taken it better than both of them--and muttered a sulky “Hi.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Charles said, polite enough. Arthur watched him out of the corner of his eye for a second. Charles’s face was arranged into a mild expression, friendly but not too friendly. He didn’t return Javier’s beaming grin.

“What d’you want to drink?” Arthur asked. He caught Javier’s eye and jerked his head, dismissing John and Javier out to the parking lot. They went, John’s arguments stifled by the arm around his neck. 

_I owe you,_ Arthur mouthed at Javier, who only rolled his eyes. Javier had been playing peacemaker between Arthur and John for as long as the three of them had been Dutch's unruly sons. Arthur turned his attention back to Charles. “Coffee? Beer? Just water?” 

Charles brightened. “Beer?” he asked. 

“Sure, we got all kinds,” Arthur said. “It technically ain’t time to switch the menus over, but I have keys to the beer fridge.” 

“I’ll have a beer, then,” Charles said, following Arthur over to the bar. “Maybe a few, if I can leave my rig here while I sleep it off at the Saints.” 

Arthur waved a hand in agreement. “Don’t bother me none,” he said. “I’ll tell second shift to leave it be. They won’t bother it. What'cha want? We got the usual domestics an' a few British imports to piss off Sean, plus a bunch'a weird craft shit we brew at Hosea’s place.” 

“Weird how?”

Arthur shrugged. “Different flavors, more hops, less hops, Belgian-style, all that,” he said, reaching for the many, many conversations about beer-brewing that he’d purposefully ignored over the years. “I’m not really, uh, involved in the process. It’s more Hosea an' Javier’s thing than mine.”

“I’ll take whatever you think the best one is,” Charles said. 

“Can do.” Arthur left him at the bar and disappeared into the beer fridge for a minute, returning with two bottles of cloudy reddish beer, which he thunked down on the bar. “Hosea says this is an eye-pee-ay. Whatever that is. ‘S good.” 

“Perfect,” said Charles. 

Arthur cracked the tops and they clinked the bottles together, Arthur thumping his down on the bar and bringing it up to his lips. 

The beer was cold, which was what really mattered. He was sure there were subtleties to the flavor, but he was too hot and too tired to chase them. He took a long pull and Charles did the same. 

“Hmm,” Charles hummed, apparently pleased. “Not bad.”

Arthur smiled. “D’you always stay at the Saints when you’re in town?” he asked. Arthur’d spent a night or two there over the years. It wasn’t a bad place to catch a decent night’s sleep, though last time Arthur’d bothered the feller in the next room over had been experiencing some kind of intestinal distress and had spent the whole night hollering and sobbing into the wall between their rooms. The whole experience had been so unsettling that Arthur hadn't gone back since. 

Charles nodded. “There’s a couple of rooms above Smithfield's, but that place sucks,” he said. “The Saints is at least quiet at night and doesn’t make me feel like a tourist.” 

Arthur laughed. “John lived above Smithfield's for a while,” he said. “I only ever set foot in there once, before we got this place up and runnin’. Bunch'a out of towners thought I worked there, on account of, well, the way I look, I guess, an' got mad at me for not bringin’ ‘em more to drink. First fight I ever got into here was at Smithfield's.” 

“You do a lot of fighting?” Charles asked, gesturing at Arthur’s knuckles. 

Arthur flicked his fingers ruefully. His knuckles were scarred and thick with callouses, and his fingers were crooked enough to give him away to anybody who knew how to spot a fighter. “Not as much anymore,” he admitted. “I’m gettin’ a bit too old to be throwin’ that many punches. I like a good fight now an' again, though. ‘S good for the blood, Dutch says.” 

“You box or you just brawl?”

“Just brawl,” Arthur said, laughing a bit. He rubbed the back of his neck again. “I ain’t ever had any kinda trainin’. You box?”

“A little,” said Charles, cracking a smile. He set his beer aside and laid his hands flat on the bartop, so Arthur could see his knuckles. They were nearly as battered as Arthur’s own, calloused and scarred, his little fingers bent at the joints. “My uncles taught me back when I lived on the rez. It was a good way to keep me out of trouble.” 

“You any good?” Arthur sized Charles up with a fighter’s eye, pushing his attraction aside. Charles was a big man. He was obviously strong and he moved gracefully, like he knew exactly what to do with his body all of the time. He was probably faster than he looked. _Probably a lot faster,_ Arthur thought, mouth dry again. He took another swig of his beer to hide the spike of arousal that shivered through him. 

Charles made a noncommittal noise, but his eyes were bright. “I’m not bad,” he allowed, false as fool’s gold. Arthur smiled. He kind of wanted to ask Charles to hit him, but wasn’t sure how to do that without sounding like an absolute lunatic. 

“Is that Arthur?” Hosea stuck his head out of the kitchen. He was not dusted with flour, for once, and his apron was clean. It must’ve been a slow day. He saw Arthur drinking on the job and scowled. “The hell are you doing, you fool? We thought you were dead!” 

“I ain’t,” Arthur said helpfully, taking another drink. He heard Charles snicker and repressed his own delighted smile. He liked making Charles laugh. _Jesus, I got it bad,_ he thought. Attraction was one thing--Arthur was rusty, but he knew how to manage attraction. But he was actually starting to _like_ Charles, and that was a different set of feelings to manage all together. 

“Well how was I supposed to know that?” Hosea demanded. “We got a call from a bunch of folks in Strawberry who said you never showed up! We thought you’d wrecked somewhere. Dutch and Bill are out looking for you and Mary-Beth’s made a run for the county hospital. What happened?”

“I--hold on, Hosea,” Arthur said. He turned back to Charles with a grimace. “Duty calls,” he said apologetically. He nudged what was left of his beer over to Charles. “Enjoy yourself, yeah? Cool off. Don’t let John an' Javier bother you when they get back in, an' don't believe a word John says. Thanks for the ride.” 

“No problem,” Charles said, lifting his bottle in salute. 

Reluctant to leave him, Arthur trudged over to Hosea and followed the old man into the kitchen, his good mood rapidly disappearing. 

“What happened?” Hosea repeated, eyes sharp. “And is that the feller with the caramel sauce? What are you doing with him?”

“My bike broke down,” Arthur said, holding up a hand to stave off more questions. “Must'a been the heat or somethin’. I think a gasket popped an’ let the fuel line loose, but I ain’t taken a good look at her yet. She gave out on me on the road, ‘bout ten miles outside Valentine. I thought I was gonna have to walk back, but Charles found me, offered me a ride. We went back to get my bike, then we came here.”

Hosea grunted. “Charles, huh?” 

“Shut up,” said Arthur. He scowled and shook his head. “Anyway, we picked all my shit up an’ Charles brought me here. I got him somethin’ to drink for his trouble, that’s all.” 

“And the deliveries?” 

“Still with the bike,” Arthur said. “John an’ Javier are getting it all now.”

Hosea sighed. “Well, we’ve called most of the folks who’re expecting a delivery today,” he said. “All but one of ‘em agreed to wait ‘til tomorrow, for a generous discount next time they make an order.” 

Arthur groaned. “Let me guess, I get to go drive out to fuckin’ Strawberry an’ deliver to the one guy who wouldn’t wait.” 

“See, I knew you weren’t as dumb as you look,” said Hosea. He tossed Arthur his keys. “Take my truck, and some of the fresh shit. The boxes are there for you by the door. You’re goin’ to a Mister Cooper O’Leary, runs a store in town. He wants something to spice up his bakery section or something.” 

“You’re the boss,” Arthur grumbled. He hated taking Hosea’s truck, hated feeling trapped and hemmed in, but at least the truck had air conditioning. John’s old Jeep had shit all. Arthur paused. “The feller out in front, can you… can you tell him thanks for me? He really did help me out in a tight spot, an’ he ain’t have any reason to do it other than him bein’ a decent feller.” 

Hosea rolled his eyes, but he had softened a little in his old age, so he nodded. “I’ll make sure he knows,” he said. “Now go on, git. Mister O’Leary’s waiting.” 

Arthur sighed and did as he was told. Laden down with boxes, he left out the back, dumping all the shit he had to take in the back of the truck and climbing into the driver’s seat. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he took a look through the rearview mirror at Lost Country, at the dusty storefront and the rig in the parking lot. John and Javier were struggling with his bike. Charles was inside drinking. 

Arthur smiled. 

_Maybe not the worst day I’ve had after all,_ he thought, letting himself savor the feeling. Then he pushed his thoughts away and aimed for Strawberry, keen to get done with all this business and collapse back into bed. 

\---

The week leading up to Memorial Day was, as always, fucking awful. Arthur knew it was coming every year, reliable as death and taxes, but he still couldn’t help himself. By the Wednesday prior he’d sunk into a bitter, black mood that left him snapping and growling at anyone who came too close. By Thursday his hands had started to ache. By Friday he’d stopped sleeping, and Hosea took one look at him coming in for the morning shift and turned him right around back home. 

Arthur drove home mad about that too, trapped in a shitty rental car while his bike was at the mechanic’s, unable to be content for even a second and hating himself for it, hating the fact that he was still like this a decade past, trapped in a fury and a grief so deep it laid him bare every time he stopped to try and catch his breath. 

Even the memory of Charles’s smile in the cab of his truck couldn’t bring Arthur out of his gloom. The sound of his voice was dim and warped and threaded with broken glass. Arthur couldn’t think about Charles without thinking about Eliza, and he kept cutting himself open every time his thoughts drifted to the memory of Charles’s hands or his smile or his steady, kind voice.

It pissed Arthur the fuck off. 

So he left a day early. He always went camping out in the plains over Memorial Day weekend--he couldn’t work and he couldn’t stay in a place around other people, because he invariably got mad enough to want to hurt people. Hosea and Dutch didn’t even bother making him request the weekend off anymore. They knew where he’d go, and they knew why. 

And since Hosea’d sent him home there was no reason why Arthur should spend another night in his damn house, sleepless and pissy, when he could ride out on one of his horses and spend the whole weekend staring up at the stars.

He left the shitty rental car in his front yard, stuffed a cracked leather saddlebag full of clothes, kindling and the few cans of food he had in his pantry, and headed out to the barn. 

Usually he took one of his steadier horses. Hemingway, Arthur’s little bay mustang, was as true as a mountain, and both Magnolia and Reliance, two of his mares, had made the trip with Arthur before and gotten him through it alright. 

This year, he cast a blind, furious eye over his patchwork herd of rescues and the only horse he wanted was Rooster. 

Arthur whistled sharply. Rooster put his head up and his ears back, snorting, but he gave in and made his way over to Arthur, mincing his steps like Arthur was a rival stallion who needed a good kick in the face. 

Arthur forced himself to breathe and relax, just a little. He could be as mad as he wanted at the world, he could be mean and unsociable and rude as hell, but he knew that he couldn’t take it out on his horses. 

“Hey, boy,” he said gruffly. He put his hand out, palm up, so Rooster knew that Arthur would do him no harm. “It ain’t you I’m mad at. I’m sorry. C’mere.” 

Rooster snorted and tossed his head again, but his mincing steps stopped and he relaxed his ears, coming close enough for Arthur to run a knuckle down the edge of his cheek. Despite the weird, white stripes crossing his back and barrel like he was some kind of backwards zebra, Rooster was a handsome, blood-red bay, and a few years on Arthur's land had filled him out, given him lean, sleek muscle. 

Rooster huffed and closed his teeth, none too gently, over one of Arthur’s ears. 

“Yeah, ow, I get it, I get it,” Arthur hissed, extricating himself from his horse with a growl of pain. Rooster whuffed, apparently pleased, and lipped at Arthur’s hair mildly. “I’ll behave if you behave,” Arthur told him. 

Rooster didn’t make any sounds of agreement, being that he was a horse and also a giant asshole, but he also didn’t kick Arthur in the balls when Arthur guided him over to the side of the barn and began to tack him up, either, which was as good as it ever got with Roose.

Rooster took a saddle fine, even going so far as to allow Arthur to cinch a breast collar over his narrow chest, but for as long as Arthur’d had him he had never tolerated a bit or spurs. Fortunately most of Arthur’s horses had issues, so he had a few bitless bridles on hand and coaxed Rooster into one of those without too much fuss. Rooster put his ears back when Arthur strapped the saddlebag onto one side and a pack of camping equipment to the other, but that was as much protest as he put up. 

It was near noon by the time Arthur set out. He left the rest of the herd with feed, gave his dogs a few scratches under the chin--Cain wanted to come and Copper wanted to sleep--and warned the barn cats not to murder the chickens while he was gone. 

“Hosea and John’ll be by tomorrow,” he told the cats. “And they’ve got my permission to skin you if you go crazy with power and kill any chickens. Stick to mice.” He got a bunch of long, slow blinks in return, snorted to himself, and rode out. 

The state line between Ambarino and New Hanover was porous. There were dozens of roads and riding trails that crossed the Dakota River, which cleaved the two states apart, and Arthur could reach most of them with a little ingenuity. 

Rooster tossed his head as the farmhouse slowly disappeared behind him. He leaned against the bridle and whickered. 

Arthur smiled grimly. “Yeah, boy?” he asked. “You wanna run?” 

He settled himself deeper into his saddle, gripping loosely with his knees and his thighs, then touched his heels to Roose’s quivering flanks and gave the horse his head. 

Rooster took off like a shot, galloping across the fields like a bolt of brindled lightning. He seemed to know where to go instinctively, his hooves following the grooves in the earth left over from a hundred rides. The wind tugged and tore at them. 

There was no faster horse in Arthur’s herd than Rooster. Cloudrunner, a thoroughbred mare Arthur had ended up with by cheating in a poker game, was faster over short sprints, but Rooster could go for miles and miles, long past the point when any of his other horses, even Lyra, would fold over and quit. 

“C’mon, boy!” Arthur shouted, squinting against the wind. “C’mon!” 

He started his ride tense, wound so tight that all his bones ached, his joints creaking in protest. Every time Rooster’s hooves hit the ground the impact jarred Arthur from the base of his spine all the way up through his teeth. It felt a lot like getting punched, blows that rained down on him without stopping, without caring that he was in pain, that he was weakening. 

Arthur fought it every step of the way, the road jarring him, Rooster panting and heaving, Arthur's knees and his hips and his knuckles screaming in protest, and then as Rooster galloped around a bend in the mountain and found a trail leading down four miles to the river’s edge, Arthur couldn’t fight anymore and he let the trail win. 

If this had been a real fight, Arthur would’ve had his teeth kicked in by whoever had been beating on him so bad, and he would have deserved it too for being so fucking stubborn, but it wasn’t a real fight and as soon as he relaxed his body, the pain slowed. It didn’t go away entirely--he was too old for it to go away entirely--but it did ease, Rooster’s hooves falling into a calmer rhythm halfway between a gallop and a canter and Arthur’s body remembering how to move with the horse’s, his hips loosening, his shoulders dropping. 

Each of Rooster’s strides pushed Arthur deeper into a strange, calm space that he’d only been able to find on the back of a bike or the back of a horse, a quiet space that surrounded him on all sides like a still, deep pool. 

He didn’t have to think in that space. He didn’t have to feel anything, not grief or guilt or rage or pain, and nothing could reach through the pool’s still waters and touch him there. 

It was nice. 

By the time evening came, quiet and edged with purple, Arthur and Rooster had made it to New Hanover, to the edges of Cumberland National Forest and its towering straight-backed pines. Arthur was exhausted enough to want to sleep and to know that he’d be able to do it out here in a way that he hadn’t been able to at home. Rooster was tired too, though he refused to let Arthur coddle him like Arthur would any of the others. 

Setting up camp was easy, muscle memory; in their early years together Hosea, Dutch and Arthur had spent more nights outside than in and the mechanics of getting a camp up as dusk fell were second nature. Arthur didn’t even have to emerge from the quiet space inside his head. He had a tent up and a fire going before darkness swallowed the trees, Rooster unsaddled, brushed down and loosely tied to a pine so he wouldn’t wander too far. 

Dinner was a can of cold peas and a slug of sharp whisky. Sleep did come, but not easily. It never came easily on the first night out. Arthur’s dreams were colorful and disjointed, familiar but all wrong, like a movie that was played out of order. He skipped from bad memory to bad memory, dreaming of broken noses and broken fingers and broken legs, Montana sunrises and Texas sunsets, a hand laid on his cheek in pain and a hand laid there out of hate. 

When he woke up shouting, sometime around two or three with the night black and heavy over him, Rooster was there standing watch over his bedroll. When he woke up again at dawn Roose had wandered off, keen to pretend that he didn’t care a whit whether or not Arthur lived or died. 

Feeling marginally more human and less like a bomb about to go off, Arthur polished off a packet of oatmeal, dry, and packed up. He and Rooster were on the trail again before the sun fully cleared the pines. 

Arthur was headed for the wide, sweeping plains of the Heartlands. He’d tried other places over the years. The dense forests of Big Valley, the high mountains of Ambarino, even the hillbilly shitkicker paradise of Roanoke Ridge. 

Nothing managed to get through to Arthur this time of year quite like the plains. 

From the edge of the forest, Arthur followed well-worn BLM trails around down the hill and into the high flats. Most of the land out here was either national forest or national prairie, all of it watched over by a few rangers and the occasional game warden. Arthur didn’t see another living soul as he made his way towards the towering butte of Caliban’s Seat, digging his heels in for the climb. 

Rooster tossed his head and snorted and stamped at the inconvenience but he was a strong horse, despite his size, and he dug in and slowly, carefully hauled himself and Arthur up to the top of the great hunk of reddish rock. 

At the top of Caliban’s Seat, Arthur could breathe again. 

The plains spilled down Caliban’s sides, riotous with color, noisy with life. Sparrows darted between thick stands of chaparral and hawks wheeled up in the sky, black against hard blue, their shadows shifting across the earth. A doe picked her way delicately across a swath of red dirt, nosing tender spring grass and trailed by two spotted fawns still ungainly on their spindled legs. 

April’s rains had drawn spiky bands of thistle free of their stubborn roots, coaxed up shy clutches of monkshood and sunny sprays of verbena, stiff thorny patches of agave and prickles of pear, fans of mallow, drips of bright red poppy. Far off down in the flatlands a herd of wild horses thundered by, a stallion breaking away to chase off a rival, throwing up clouds of dust, and father off still a cluster of cattle lazed in the heat, tended to by bored cowboys. 

To the north the Grizzlies reared up against the sky, black and inscrutable, still wearing their snowy caps, and to the south the flatlands dropped lower and lower until they disappeared into the haze rising off Flat Iron Lake. 

Arthur took a deep breath. Flexed his fingers. Closed his eyes. Sunlight blazed against the back of his neck. Hot air seared his lungs. His joints creaked and groaned. Underneath him Rooster snorted, shifted; at this height he was a part of Arthur, an extension of his blood and bone. Their hearts beat together. Rooster’s flanks and the inside of Arthur’s jeans were both slick with sweat. 

He kept his eyes closed until he couldn't feel his body anymore, its aches and pains faded and distant, its bitter grief lost to the heart and the openness of the plains. 

When Arthur had been younger, when his grief had been newer and had been braided tightly to hatred and fury and the feeling of blood on his teeth, Arthur’d had a hard time out here. He’d hated the beauty of it all, the starkness. Hated watching the hawks dive for the hares and the coyotes falling on the fawns. He’d hated even the dead stands of chaparral, the wildfire scorches, the wind-torn trees. Back then it had felt as if the world outside his friends and family had echoed Arthur’s bleakness, had pulled all that burned and barren earth from inside of him and thrown it back out into the world around him. 

But Eliza and Isaac were ten years dead and Arthur had grown too old to feel like scorched earth. Life was just life, and he knew that better now. Hawks fell on rabbits and coyotes hunted deer and wildfires sometimes swallowed hundreds of miles of plains, eating up everything in their path. 

But even with the fires, the flowers grew back every year. The deer came to graze and the rabbits came up out of their burrows. The pines shook off wildfire marks and grew taller and taller. 

Arthur was an idiot who’d only ever finished the sixth grade, but even he could grasp at that metaphor. 

He sighed and sank deeper into Rooster’s saddle. There was no use for all of this pain. He had nowhere to put it and it was getting harder to hold on to. Arthur’s grip on it was getting weaker by the year. 

He could hardly remember what Isaac had looked like, now. He’d only had the boy for five years--twice Isaac’s life had passed since then and his face was blurry in Arthur’s memory. He’d been a little thing, Arthur’s son. Blond like Arthur but blue-eyed like his momma, with Arthur’s chin and Eliza’s dimples. A cute little bastard. 

Eliza hadn’t wanted to get married, even though Arthur’d offered. He remembered her face even less. Black hair, blue eyes, a tired mouth. She hadn’t smiled much but when she had it had usually been for Isaac. She’d tolerated Arthur well enough, had been his friend, had been grateful for his devotion to his son and his interest in being part of Isaac’s life, but they hadn’t been close. Hadn’t been lovers, not really, not past that one night that gave them their son and a fistful of other nights when the loneliness between them had gotten too hard to bear. 

Arthur shoved the heels of his hands into his eyes, screwing them shut against the sting. 

Five years with his son. That was all he’d had. And even those five years hadn’t been whole--Arthur’d been young and wild then, afraid of cars and houses and closed-in spaces. He’d helped Eliza get set up in a little town outside of Boulder, Colorado and he’d visited them whenever he’d been over that way, bringing cash for Eliza and toys for Isaac, spending a handful of nights sleeping on Eliza’s shitty old couch. Isaac’s favorite toy had been a stuffed horse, a black-and-white thing Arthur’d found at a Goodwill in Santa Fe. Isaac had worn the ears clean off by the time he’d been three. Somebody, a neighbor probably, or maybe one of Eliza’s coworkers, had seen to it that the boy had gone into his grave holding that old threadbare horse. 

“Christ!” Arthur pressed harder against his eyes. “Christ,” he said again. An ache was building. “Christ, Jesus, fucking, shitting _Christ._ ” 

Isaac, if he’d lived, would be about fifteen now. Old enough to learn how to drive. He’d probably work the shop on the weekends with his old man, spend the week going to school or helping with the horses. 

He’d be tall like Arthur and lean like his mama. 

Maybe Arthur and Eliza would’ve found some kind of peace between them by now. A way to live with each other. Isaac had been a surprise, the result of a spare, single moment of attraction--Arthur had seen Eliza across a crowded biker bar in Galveston and had wanted her so bad his teeth had hurt. They’d gone to bed, said their goodbyes over a shared cigarette, and then Arthur had turned back up seven months later to find Eliza still working that same shitty bar, round as a melon. 

He’d tried to visit once or twice a month after that, especially when Isaac had been real small, but Dutch had kept moving east and the trip to Galveston, and then to Boulder when Eliza had decided she wanted a change of scenery, had gotten longer and longer. 

By the time Isaac and Eliza had died, Arthur’d been making the trip maybe once every three months. He’d intended to come over to spend Memorial Day weekend teaching his son how to sit on the back of a motorcycle, his bag heavy with gifts--he hadn’t seen Isaac since Christmas and his only interactions with Eliza had been over the phone as she told him how much money she’d need to get through the month. 

“Christ,” Arthur said again, softer. The ache was fading now, like a bruise pressed hard on and then let go. The dull pain of it would stay, but Arthur could live with that. 

He blew out a great, heavy breath. 

“You did good, boy,” he said, patting Roose’s sweaty neck. The stallion snorted at him. 

“C’mon,” Arthur said, setting his ever-dimming memories of his son aside. “We might as well enjoy ourselves a bit, huh? Ain’t much else to do out here.” 

He stashed his gear in a hollow about halfway down the Seat, content to leave it for later. In the near-decade he’d been coming here he’d never had anyone come by and snatch his shit--this was open country, high country, and not too many backpackers or tourists bothered to come out this way in the heat of late May. 

Rooster, free from Arthur’s heavy gear, perked up immediately and needed no coaxing to toss his head and let go, flying across the plains like a bird. 

They spent most of the second day running around like idiots, Arthur egging Rooster on, Rooster tossing his head and stamping and galloping, his neck shiny with sweat, his flanks heaving like a bellows. 

They stopped to wash off and cool down at the shore of Flat Iron Lake, chewing on some jerky and some grass respectively, then Arthur mounted up and they did it all over again to get back to Caliban’s Seat and spend the night at its crest, where all that stood between Arthur and the stars was the sky. 

Arthur’s sleep the second night wasn’t easy either, but it was easier. His dreams were mostly shapeless, more sparks of half-remembered sensation and feeling that true memory. 

Sunday Arthur spent hunting, stalking small game from Caliban’s high ridge. He bagged a couple of rabbits with a twenty-two and skinned them in the field, feeling a bit like a deranged Boy Scout, remembering Hosea’s hands guiding his own all those years ago, Arthur’s restless energy turned for once towards something good, something productive. 

Monday was the hardest day to get through. It always was. Eliza and Isaac hadn’t died on Memorial Day--they’d died on a Thursday, a full four days before Arthur’d come around to visit. But it was on Memorial Day that Arthur had found out. Had pulled up to Eliza’s apartment building, climbed the stairs, seen the crime scene tape. 

Ten years on, though, Arthur had a system. He spent Saturday and Sunday exhausting himself to the point of collapse and then on Monday he hunkered down underneath his tent, hiding from the sun and everything else, and drank himself stupid. 

This year was no different. Arthur blacked out some time after noon and woke up on Tuesday morning. He rolled over and threw up, then rolled to the other side and threw up again for good measure. 

Rooster was not impressed. 

Arthur managed to get up, get some instant coffee in himself, and pack up without too much trouble. If he’d brought Hemingway or Reliance the ride back north would’ve been easy and gentle, because Hemingway and Reliance were forgiving horses who understood that Arthur was sometimes an idiot. 

Rooster, however, was not forgiving, and Arthur was too tired and hungover to fight with him. He gave Rooster his head and let the horse set the pace. 

The pace sucked. 

But it meant he was home again by nightfall, just in time to put out more water for the horses, brush Rooster down, feed the cats, and collapse into bed. 

His sleep on Tuesday night was as easy as it ever got. 

Wednesday was spent in recovery. The women had dropped off some food when they’d come by, most likely to start the garden for the year, and someone, probably Hosea, had fixed the shower in Arthur’s bathroom so that the water pressure could almost be described as “decent” instead of “dribbling” or “piss-like.”

The horses got fed, a broken section of fence got mended, and the yard even got mowed. 

By Thursday morning, Arthur was more or less himself again. His anger and his grief were--not gone, not really, they’d never be _gone,_ but they were less all-encompassing. Less keen. He could live with them again. 

“How was it?” Hosea asked, when Arthur came through the door on Thursday for his shift. 

Arthur grunted. “Fine,” he said. “Ain’t get snakebit this time, so an improvement over last year.” That had really sucked. Arthur's right leg had swollen up like a sausage and he'd had to ride his horse--Magnolia, that year, a sweet horse who'd been nonetheless alarmed to have her man dying atop her back--to the county hospital like something out of a bad spaghetti western. Arthur, instead of spending Memorial Day blind drunk, had spent Memorial Day in the hospital getting anti-venin pumped into him. 

Hosea’s mouth twitched up into a smile. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “I got a call from the mechanic’s yesterday--your bike’s good to go, if you wanna go pick it up after work. I’ll drive you.” 

“Sounds good to me,” said Arthur. “Any deliveries today?”

Hosea shook his head. “No, not today. You’re up front, I’m afraid. I don’t trust you for a whole shift in this kitchen.”

“I’d take offense to that, but you’re not wrong,” Arthur allowed, with a roll of his eyes. Arthur could cook enough to feed himself but the delicate work involved in baking was beyond his patience. Long stints in the shop kitchen tended to end with shit catching fire. “Don’t worry none, I’ll stay outta your hair.” 

“Git gone, then.” Hosea waved Arthur off, busily turning his attention to other things, but not before Arthur caught relief shining in the old man’s eyes. Hosea was happy that Arthur’d made it back.

 _Sentimental old fool,_ Arthur thought. 

Arthur went through the ritual of opening up Lost Country with more good cheer than he usually could muster. 

He’d just settled behind the bar with his sketchbook, tracing the lines of a big buck he’d seen out on the plains, a fifteen- or sixteen-pointer with a rack of velvet on his head, when the bell rang. 

“Arthur,” Charles said, stopping in the doorway. “You’re back.” 

Arthur’s head came up and his pencil jumped on the page, marring the lines of the buck’s flank. “Uh, yeah,” he said, blinking at all the light Charles was letting in. As always when he saw Charles his heart stumbled, attraction hitting his gut like a kick from a horse. Arthur didn’t know what it was about Charles exactly--he’d never been able to untangle the particular peculiarities of his attraction, of what drew him to the odd woman or man but left him cold as a fish towards most others--but it had happened enough times now that Arthur knew that it wouldn’t go away. 

“Good mornin’,” said Arthur, remembering his manners all at once. He closed his sketchbook, marking his place with his pencil. 

“You haven’t been in for a bit,” Charles said, stepping into the shop and letting the door swing closed behind him. He looked Arthur up and down. “Busy week?”

“Naw, I’ve been off,” Arthur said, rubbing the back of his neck. He was aware that he looked a bit like he’d spent a week sleeping in the bushes. Arthur’s shaved before he’d come in this morning, shedding what John called his “Depression Beard,” but he needed to go into town and get his hair cut and Arthur had shadows under his eyes that would take another week or more to fade entirely. “Campin’, you know.” 

He didn’t say it--he had _some_ sense--but Charles had a wild look about him too, a string of long nights and longer days hanging heavy over his shoulders and snapping at his heels. His frayed, oil-stained jeans were held up with a length of rope and the flannel thrown over Charles's broad shoulders was so threadbare that it had become more the idea of a shirt than an actual shirt. 

“Coffee?” Arthur asked. “A latte?”

Charles hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. “I need something with sugar,” he said. He hesitated again. “Like, a lot of sugar.” 

Arthur cracked a grin. “I gotcha,” he said. “Hold on.” 

He’d learned how to make a--well, he couldn’t remember what the name of it was, but it was some kind of frozen, blended coffee drink thing with a shitload of syrup and caramel sauce--from Tilly. Tilly, Karen and Bill all despised straight coffee and would only drink something if it had alcohol, ice or sugar in it. Preferably all three, but it was only five-seventeen in the morning and Arthur wasn’t about to get Charles arrested for driving drunk. 

He bustled around and presented Charles with the monstrosity a few minutes later, after the godawful sound of the blender chewing through ice had drawn Hosea out of the kitchen to stare at Arthur long enough for Arthur to grow red around the ears. 

“What is it?” Charles asked, though he gamely took the drink and eyed it warily. 

“No idea,” Arthur admitted. He leaned across the bar and squirted a bit of whipped cream on top. Charles’s eyes widened. This close, Arthur could see that Charles had scars on his face too, like Arthur did--there was a faint scar across the bridge of his nose and a lightning strike of silvery skin down the left side of Charles’s jaw. One of his eyebrows was thinly split. 

Arthur resisted the urge to trace the scars with his thumb and pulled away. He wasn’t far enough past the black gloom of Memorial Day to enjoy feeling like he wanted nothing more than to run his hands through Charles’s hair, to trace the scars on his face and his knuckles, to make him laugh. It was too complicated. Arthur made himself pull back.

“Tilly--one of the women--one of the waitresses,” Arthur corrected, scrubbing at the back of his neck again, “showed me how to make it once. She don’t like regular coffee much. G’wan, try it. Ain’t poison, I promise.” 

Charles eyed the mountain of blended coffee and whipped cream in front of him, shrugged, and took a drink. 

“ _Oh,”_ Charles said, his voice low and shocking. His pupils expanded. His grip on the drink tightened. “That’s, uh.” 

Charles didn’t finish. He just took another long drink, throat working, and Arthur had to look away, shocked by the-- _by the moan,_ Arthur thought, dizzy, _Jesus Christ_. 

“I’ll take another one,” Charles said when he came up for air. There was whipped cream on his mouth and a look in his eye that was eating Arthur alive, annual grief be damned. 

“Yeah?” Arthur asked. 

“Yeah,” said Charles, so Arthur made him another one. Charles had finished the first by the time Arthur had the second ready, a twenty-dollar bill already out and on the counter. 

“Glad you like it,” Arthur said, pleased. He liked that he’d been the one to put that look on Charles’s face. He kind of wanted to do it again. When Eliza’s face swam through his memory, Arthur pushed it away. He gave himself four days to grieve every year. He was past it now, and the year was his again until the calendar turned over and May came again. Eventually the grief would kill him, Arthur knew, but it hadn’t this year and it ought to mind its place. Arthur’d built a space in his life for it so that it wouldn’t eat him up, and that space he’d made was where it would stay. 

Arthur dragged his attention back to Charles. 

“It’s good,” Charles said. He wasn’t going through the second half as fast, sipping and savoring instead of gulping down the whole thing in one go. “It’s _really_ good. What’s in it?” 

Arthur told him.

Charles grunted. “Please stay on the morning shift forever,” he said. “None of the others have ever thought of giving me something like this.” 

Arthur tried not to puff up like a goddamn rooster but he wasn’t sure he managed to hold off. “I ain’t gonna be on the mornin’ shift forever,” he said apologetically. “Ain’t good for anyone, ‘cept maybe you. But I’ll make one for you anytime, if you catch me workin’. We can still make coffee an’ shit at night. Can even spike it for you, if you want.” 

Charles raised an eyebrow, obviously, openly tempted. “I’ll think about it,” he said. The first drink had taken some of the wild edge off his face, had smoothed out the lines around his eyes. “So where were you camping? Around here?”

“Not far,” Arthur said. “Caliban’s Seat, mostly, a bit in Cumberland National Forest. I--well, my bike’s still in the shop, so I took one of the horses. ‘S a decent time. Good sunsets. Lots’a rabbits.” 

Charles nodded. “I’ve camped in Cumberland before,” he said. “Never with a horse, though. Bet it was beautiful.” 

“Yeah,” Arthur said, He went to rub his neck again and made himself stop, rubbing his chin instead. “I go every year, just about. ‘S nice to get out of all this for a few days.” He waved a hand to encompass the shop. Charles didn’t need to know that Arthur’s yearly camping trips were because Arthur couldn’t get over himself, couldn’t hold on to even this shitty veneer of respectability, couldn’t make it without needing a few days to lose his mind entirely.

Charles just nodded again, like he understood Arthur perfectly. “I missed seeing you,” he said, matter-of-factly. 

Arthur blinked. He opened his mouth, poleaxed, and said, intelligently, “Uh. I, uh. Thank you?”

Charles held a straight face for a long, agonizing heartbeat, leaving Arthur _convinced_ that he’d made a fool of himself yet again, caught himself out flat-footed and dumbstruck, but then Charles broke into a wide smile.

“Sorry,” he said, sincerely. “I couldn’t help myself.” 

Arthur waved him off, embarrassment creeping red up his neck. “It’s, uh, fine.” He said. 

“Do you want to get dinner with me?” Charles asked. 

This time Arthur _was_ stuck dumb. He stared at Charles. Charles raised an eyebrow. 

Arthur said nothing. 

“Look,” Charles said, setting the coffee down. “I--I’m not very good at this, so forgive me if I overstep, but. I’d like to have dinner with you.”

Arthur cleared his throat. “I--alright,” he said. 

“I just think--wait, alright?” 

“Alright,” Arthur said. He met Charles’s eyes and then had to look away, convinced that he’d read it all wrong, that Charles was just asking to be friendly. “If--if you want, I mean. I’d like to. Have dinner.”

Charles lit up like the goddamn night sky. “Alright,” he repeated, smiling. His teeth were very white, Arthur noticed, and his expression was genuinely excited. “Is tonight okay?” 

Arthur nodded. It would be fine. He’d make it be fine. He had done his mourning. He was allowed to want things, goddamnit. Hosea and Dutch were always telling him to move on, to try and--to try and get past it all. “Where’d you--where’d you like to go?” he asked, before his nerve failed him. 

Charles chewed his lip for a moment. “Keane’s?”

Keane’s would be tolerable on a Thursday. Wouldn’t be much to eat, but Arthur could make it work. 

Arthur nodded again. “Okay,” he said. “Keane’s. Wanna--wanna meet here? Sevenish?” 

Charles’s smile grew wider. “Seven,” he agreed. “Here. I’ll be back by then.” 

“Alright,” said Arthur. _I know what’s happened,_ he thought, still struggling not to look into Charles’s eyes. _I got heatstroke out in the plains and now I’m wrapped around some cactus tripping my goddamn balls off._

He’d had worse trips, though, so Arthur was willing to go along with it for now. 

“See you at seven,” Charles said. He took the rest of his drink and left, tossing a little wave over his shoulder that Arthur refused to be charmed by. The bell rang, the door swung closed, and Arthur was left sagging against the bar for strength, dazed and utterly confused. 

“You must like that feller an awful lot,” Hosea remarked, sticking his head out of the kitchen. His blue eyes were dancing with mischief. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you say that many words to a person before ten ay-em in my life.” 

“Shut up,” Arthur muttered. His face was numb. _I’m dreaming,_ he thought. _I must be dreaming. No one like Charles would ever_ \--

“So, what’s the news?” Hosea asked, coming behind the bar fully, not giving Arthur a moment to gather his thoughts. “That looked like a pretty serious conversation, especially for you.” 

“I, uh, I think I have a date,” Arthur said. 

Hosea managed to hold onto a straight face, though Arthur could tell he was struggling. “With that feller?” 

Arthur nodded. 

“About damn time,” Hosea told Arthur, laughing and clapping him hard on the back. “We were all wonderin’ when you’d work up the nerve. Don’t tell Dutch, though, yeah? Hold off for a few days.” 

“I--what, why?” Arthur asked suspiciously, eyeing the old man. 

Hosea refused to look embarrassed. “We got a pot goin’,” he said. “And I’ll be damned if I let Dutch win.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: 
> 
> Canon minor character death (Eliza & Isaac). Unhealthy coping mechanisms for grief/trauma. Mentions of homophobic attitudes held by Micah, possibly held by Bill. Mentions to a closeted character (also Bill). Vague references to animal abuse (Rooster & Lyra). More direct references to Arthur's unhappy childhood, some references to Charles's turbulent childhood. In this fic, Arthur is on the asexuality spectrum (specifically grey/demisexual). 
> 
> Rooster is a warped brindle Arabian.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! If you have any questions or anything, please let me know!!! I appreciate the feedback for this story so, so much.


	3. lost country: iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We earn our "E" rating in this one. My apologies for the especially long chapter (and that's me saying that, after the first two topping 10k and 11k each), but I couldn't find a neat place to break without disrupting the flow of the story. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Arthur met Charles at seven wearing his least-tattered pair of jeans and a red button-down that he vaguely remembered Mary liking once upon a time. He shaved again and swept his hair back, scrubbed the dirt out of his knuckles, and rode his bike down to Lost Country feeling unaccountably, unreasonably nervous. 

Charles was already there. He looked good. Rested, clean-shaven, handsome, the shadows under his eyes mostly rubbed away and his hair braided into one long, neat coil that shone in the evening light like a raven’s feathers. He was dressed much the same as Arthur, wearing a pair of minimally-frayed jeans, a blue button-down flecked with white polka dots and tucked into his jeans, and a decent pair of boots. 

He was kicking at the dirt idly, turning over rocks with the toes of his boots. His hands were shoved in his pockets and he kept turning to look at Lost Country’s front door, taking a few steps towards it and then turning back before he could reach the handle. More than a few folks edged by him on their way in for evening drinks, shooting Charles odd glances, but Charles didn’t seem to notice. 

_He’s nervous,_ Arthur realized. Charles was nervous. 

The sight of Charles pacing back and forth in front of the door made Arthur’s own nervousness ease enough that he called, “Hey,” and crossed over to Charles. 

Arthur stopped a few feet back, raising a hand in a half-wave. “Hey,” he said again. “How, uh, how are ya? Day weren’t too long?” 

Charles stopped his pacing and smiled, looking Arthur up and down. “Hey,” he said back. “Nah, my day was alright. Yours?”

Arthur waved a vague hand to encompass the bar, inside which Uncle had settled on top of a bar stool like an especially lopsided king and was plucking out some raunchy hillbilly tune on his banjo. “Weren’t bad,” he said. “You hungry?”

“Yeah,” Charles said, a little smile on his face. “I am. You?” 

“I could eat.” First dates were not Arthur’s specialty, but he wasn’t too bad at them. He’d talked a few folks into his bed over the years, at any rate, and he’d wanted to marry Mary. It was third and fourth and fifth dates he really struggled with--Arthur just wasn’t that interesting of a person, not without handing over more of himself than he generally preferred to. But he could do this. 

_I hope, anyway._

“C’mon,” Arthur said, returning Charles’s little smile. “Mind walkin’? ‘S a nice evenin’.” 

“Lead the way.” Charles stepped aside and gestured out with his arm all gentleman-like, letting Arthur take the lead. “I don’t know Valentine too well, beyond this place and the Saints.” 

“Fortunately for you, there ain’t much to know.” Keane’s was a few blocks from Lost Country, past the few kitschy storefronts that made up Main Street, around the corner from the police station and the bait and ammo shop, sandwiched between the dilapidated church and an even more dilapidated row of houses. “C’mon, ‘s not far.” 

Charles followed along easily, shoving his hands in his pockets. It _was_ a nice evening. The heat wave had broken following Memorial Day and early June had come in sweet and mild, warm in the day and cool at night, cicadas singing and the sun swinging low and pretty west of the town. No too many other folks were out and about and the few that were were more than happy to leave Arthur and Charles be. 

“So how _did_ you all end up here?” Charles asked, lengthening his stride to keep pace with Arthur, who belatedly remembered that he wasn’t in no hurry and slowed his step to meet Charles halfway. “If you don’t mind me saying, it seems like you don’t like it here much. You said the others picked it? Why?” 

Arthur coughed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m… not too big a fan of civilization,” he said. “Even as little as this. Don’t really care much for the noise or the people or any of it, really.” 

“So why here?” Charles repeated. 

Arthur shrugged, choosing his words carefully. “‘Cause everyone else came,” he said. “Dutch and Hosea an’ all the rest of them, I mean. Dutch bought the shop and we all just… followed along. Valentine was better than some of the other places he was lookin’--Blackwater, Saint Denis, all of ‘em. Quieter. We were--’bout six years back we were lookin’ to stop movin’, to put down roots. We had a lot of young folks with us and Jack had just been born, and the road ain’t really a good place to raise a kid. 

“I weren’t, well, I weren’t too happy about it, but despite my moanin’ ‘s not too bad a place to settle,” Arthur continued, carefully skirting any of the more sordid details. Dutch and Hosea hadn’t picked Valentine for its rustic charm. They’d picked it because it was quiet and it was out of the way and it was deep enough in the heartlands of the country as to be mostly anonymous. “I’ve got my own bit of land up in Ambarino, so whenever I get too annoyed with all this,” he waved a hand to encompass the dust and the tourists and the faded storefronts, “I can get up there and get my head back on straight.” 

“How long have you all been together?”

“Me an’ the rest?” Arthur blew out a thoughtful breath. “I’ve been with Dutch an’ Hosea for… twenty years now? A bit more? Was fourteen when Dutch adopted me, thirteen when I fell in with him. Susan--Missus Grimshaw, she usually runs the afternoon shifts, black-haired lady who dresses like it’s eighteen ninety-six?”

Charles nodded to show that he’d met the illustrious Mrs. Grimshaw, which made Arthur smile. She was a memorable woman.

“She banded up not too much longer after me, when I was eighteen or nineteen. Then we picked up John a few years after her, an’ the rest just seemed to follow.” 

“John’s the one with the scars, right?” Charles traced three lines on his jaw to mark John’s scars. “One of your brothers?”

Arthur nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “My youngest. He's twenty-eight. You met him this mornin’. Dumbass met a face full of razor wire goin’ one-twenty in the desert a few years back. It’s really improved his looks, ain’t it?” 

Charles laughed. “There seems to be quite a few of you working at the shop,” he remarked. “Did all of you settle here together, or did a few of you start working there after Dutch had it all built?” 

“Most of us are old hands,” said Arthur. “Me, John, Javier, Bill, Tilly and Mary-Beth, Karen, Abigail.” He held up his fingers to count them all off, trying to make sure he didn’t miss anybody. “Uncle--drunk old feller who was singin’ when we left the bar--is an old buddy of Hosea’s from Korea. Kieran, the nervy one who works mornings and always looks like he just shit his pants, he’s new. Micah’s fairly new. Sean and Sadie too. Pearson we found just before we settled down. There were a few more of us back in the day, but the settled life ain’t for everyone. We lost a few boys when Dutch bought up the shop and told us we’d all be baristas and bartenders now.” Arthur still missed Mac and Davey, sometimes. They’d been loud, belligerent and drunk more often than not, but they’d been vicious and canny and good in a fight too. Arthur had heard about their accident from Trelawny, a friend of Hosea's who turned up now and again like a bad penny. It had been a real shame. 

“What were you all before?” Charles asked interestedly. “You make a mean coffee, but you don’t strike me as a career barista.” 

Arthur grimaced. “We were reprobates and degenerates, mostly,” Arthur said. “We… Dutch called us his band of modern nomads. We drifted ‘round. Settled in a place for a month or two, rented a house or a few apartments, did odd jobs and amused ourselves, then packed up and moved on when we got bored.” 

“Sounds lonely,” Charles commented. 

_Lonely?_ Arthur blinked, surprised. “It weren’t lonely,” he said. “Not for me, anyway. We were always together, for the most part, even if we never put down roots anywhere.” He thought of Eliza and Isaac with a pang and shoved their memory away. He was past it, and Charles didn’t need to hear about Arthur’s dead kid anyway. 

“Is the road lonely for you?” Arthur asked, keen to turn the conversation off of himself before he said something stupid. “I had Dutch and Hosea an’ all them with me. You… you got anybody?” 

It was Charles’s turn to shrug and tug at the back of his neck, smiling ruefully, a look in his face that said, _I should have expected that._ “It’s a bit lonely, yeah,” he admitted, more honestly than Arthur’d thought he would. “Back home in South Dakota I have some cousins and aunts around, but that’s about it. I’ve never been real good at putting down roots either.” 

“Well, you’re in good company at least,” said Arthur, aiming for charming. He wasn’t sure he’d hit his mark, but Charles’s expression did clear. They turned the corner and found themselves at Keane’s. Music spilled out into the street, tinny and old-fashioned, Waylon Jennings crooning about his broken heart. A few people were milling about outside the place, smoking and talking, and more were leaning up against the porch or the sides of the building, tapping their toes or checking their watches. 

Charles frowned. “Looks busy,” he said. “Did we need a reservation or something? I didn’t expect it to be this crowded.” 

This time Arthur did smile, pleased with himself. “I called ahead,” he said. “Just to--just to be sure we’d get a spot on time. C’mon. They’re expectin’ us.” 

Charles shot Arthur an impressed look, eyes dark, and Arthur’s gut tightened. Hosea’d been the one to suggest that Arthur call in and put his name down for seven, and Arthur resolved to be a bit nicer to the old man for the next few weeks in thanks. 

Inside, Keane’s _was_ busier than Arthur’d ever seen it, especially for a Wednesday. Most of the tables were full and the wait staff bustled around, laden with food and drinks and looking harried. 

Honky-tonk music spilled from a jukebox that looked older than Arthur was. Something that smelled delicious was cooking back in the kitchen. The hostess, a pretty-enough girl with bleach-blonde hair and an extremely disinterested expression was leaning against the podium as Arthur and Charles walked in. 

“Wait’s forty-five,” she said, examining her nails. “Sorry.” 

“‘S fine,” said Arthur. “We’ve got, uh, a reservation. Van der Linde, for two.” 

The girl looked up. “You’re not Mister Van der Linde,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. Arthur grimaced again--he’d forgotten that Dutch brought Molly here whenever Molly kicked up a fuss about romance or something. 

“I’m his son,” said Arthur. He and Dutch looked nothing alike, not really, aside from their height and their size, but most people never questioned Arthur when he used Dutch's name as his own. 

The hostess lost what little interest she’d managed to muster. “Jeannie,” she hollered, turning around, “table for two, number seven. Menus,” she added, turning back to Arthur and forking over two faded, plasticky menus. 

Another girl, this one with hair such a bright shade of red it could have only come out of a bottle and an equally bright expression, bounced over and waved the pair of them to their table. She took their drink order--beer for Arthur, who wanted to keep a clear head but also badly needed to cut his nerves a little, and a margarita of all things for Charles--and flounced off again. 

“What?” Charles asked, as Arthur stared at him. 

“A peach margarita?” Arthur had a hard time keeping the smile out of his voice. 

“I like sugar,” said Charles loftily. “And I didn’t drive, so I can indulge a little.”

Arthur held up his hands to show that he was only teasing. “Whatever floats your boat,” he said, smiling. “I promise to get'cha home safe if your drink’s got more kick that you’re lookin’ for.”

“A gentleman,” said Charles dryly, but he was smiling too. 

Arthur took a moment to look around. He couldn’t believe how many people were here--Hosea’d said that Keane’s had got itself a new chef or something, but Arthur was amazed at the transformation. Last time he’d been here the only thing to eat had been oatmeal and the only people around had been a couple of stringy, sad cowboys. 

The waitress, Jeannie, came back with their drinks and they got their orders in, a plate of surf’n’turf for Charles and a straight steak for Arthur, with a plate of mixed appetizers to share between them. 

While they waited for their food they managed to keep their small talk from getting too awkward, helped along by the music. Arthur liked old honky-tonk, Hank Williams and Waylon Jennings, music that was smooth and lonesome and sweet all at once, so he was happy to talk music with Charles while they waited. 

Despite the crowd the food came fast enough and any lingering awkwardness could be dispelled by remarks about how good the steak was and how rubbery Charles’s shrimp had turned out, how violently orange the peach margarita was and how quickly Arthur polished off the wings that had come with their plate of appetizers.

Arthur had just started to congratulate himself on a night that was not a total disaster when Charles nudged his place aside, wiped his mouth, and said, “You’ve said before that you’re adopted?” 

Arthur nearly choked on his bite of steak. “Uh, yeah,” he said, once he’d hastily finished swallowing. “I am. A few of us at the shop are. Me, John, Javier. Dutch’s got a… thing, for pickin’ up strays.” 

“How long were you in the system?” 

Usually this was a topic Arthur avoided at all costs, but he still couldn’t shake the impression of Charles’ sincerity. Somehow Arthur knew that Charles wasn’t asking out of some misguided sense of politeness or desire to make small talk. He was asking because he wanted to know. 

“Three years,” Arthur said. “Thereabouts, anyway. My--my folks’d died a few years back before I met Dutch an' I’d been through just about every iteration of the system. Foster parents, group homes, few months in juvie, the works. I was a pretty difficult kid. Dutch was the only one stupid enough to sign himself up for a lifetime of my shit.”

He carefully didn’t mention any of the less legal details. Arthur’s adoption had, technically, been a felony. The great state of Montana hadn’t sent Arthur to Dutch as a foster kid. It had, in fact, managed to put Arthur in shithole after shithole until Arthur’d gotten tired of it and bolted, after which point he’d ended up trying to pick the pocket of some dark-haired douchebag in a hotel bar in Reno. He’d been looking for a few bucks or maybe some weed and had found himself a pair of parents instead, quite against Arthur’s will and wishes at the time. 

Dutch adopting Arthur had technically qualified as a kidnapping. He and Hosea had certainly had their hands full trying to keep Arthur from bolting those first few months, when Arthur had been so angry at everyone and everything that he’d not only bitten the hand that had fed him, he’d tried to knife it in the dead of night a few times too. 

The judge in Corpus Christi who’d actually processed the adoption hadn’t given a fuck about the forged papers, though, which had named Arthur as Dutch’s recently orphaned nephew, so it had all worked out in the end, though Arthur’d needed to take Dutch’s name to avoid anyone connecting Arthur Van der Linde to Arthur Morgan, the missing boy from Montana. 

_Not that anyone ever looked,_ Arthur thought wryly. He and Montana CFPS had been well shot of each other by the time Arthur’d run. He doubted anybody had looked for him too hard.

Charles made a thoughtful noise. “I know how that goes,” he said. “Did a few years with South Dakota Cee-Pee-Ess. Aged out before I got a permanent placement, though.” 

“Sorry to hear that,” Arthur said, genuinely. He knew that most kids went through the system--not alright, but without as much trouble as Arthur’d had, but he still didn’t wish growing up that way on anybody. Looking at Charles now, though, he could see it. “You’ve kinda got that look, to be honest.” Foster kids did sometimes--a hungry look, a hard look, an edge to them that other kids didn’t have. 

“So do you,” Charles returned, with a wry smile. He tapped his own chin, mirroring the spot where Arthur’s scar was. “Thought that looked like a juvie brawl. That or you’d some time inside, and you don’t have enough ink to have done real time.”

Arthur chuckled. He had his fair share of ink, but all of his was hidden safely under his shirt. He’d never gone for the obnoxious, garish neck or hand tattoos that some of the others went for. Every time he caught sight of the stupid fucking red hand tattooed on the side of Sean’s neck he wanted to hit something, usually Sean. 

“Yeah, it was juvie,” Arthur said. “Pine Hills. Some dumbass wannabe Aryan shithead was up in my face about--somethin’ or other, I cain’t remember now. Somethin’ fuckin’ stupid, I’m sure. I was about yay high then.” He demonstrated with a hand, holding his palm out flat to indicate how short he’d been back then, before a few years of steady meals foisted on him by Hosea had worked their magic. “I couldn’t think of anythin’ better to do but headbutt the bastard, but I was too short an' I had no idea what I was doin’. Got him right in the teeth. Cut the shit out of myself, but it shut him up.”

Charles rolled up his sleeves to show a long, shiny scar on his left arm, half an inch thick and crossing from his bicep past his elbow. Arthur whistled. 

“Toothbrush shiv in Lower Brule,” he said. “Similar story to yours, I think. Wannabe skinhead took exception to my existence, pulled a shiv. He didn’t expect me to know how to box.”

“To the juvenile corrections system,” said Arthur dryly, raising his glass in a mock toast. 

Charles grinned and knocked his glass against Arthur’s, and they both drank. Arthur was pleasantly buzzed now, warm and loose, his earlier nerves a distant memory. 

“That why you got into long-haul truckin’?” Arthur asked. “‘Cause it’s hard to be… I dunno, settled?” Before they’d settled in Valentine Arthur had never lived any one place for longer than a handful of months at a time. Even with Dutch and Hosea he’d drifted around. Something in him just… wasn’t made for holding still. 

“Part of it, I think.” Charles’ dark eyes were thoughtful. “I’ve never minded being on the road, and I get to see more of the country this way that I would stuck working some nine-to-fiver in South Dakota. What about you? You seem pretty settled, even though you don’t like the town much.” 

Arthur shrugged. “This is the longest I’ve ever lived in one place,” he said. “We’ve been here since nineteen-ninety--six years, or thereabouts. It was real weird at first, but I got used to it, I guess. Helps that Dutch an' Hosea are here, and Javier an' John and the rest. If they hadn’t stayed in Valentine I’d be long gone, most like.” 

“Where would you have gone?”

“Back out West,” Arthur said immediately. He didn’t even have to think about it. Ambarino was close to what Arthur loved, as close as he could get while still being in the middle of the country. Big mountains, big skies, big plains. Everything was more real to Arthur there, beneath the redwoods of California or out in the high deserts of Nevada. There was enough space for him to--to breathe, maybe. To be. 

“Why?” Again there was that odd sincerity in Charles’s dark eyes, like he really cared why Arthur preferred the West to the East. 

“I like the aesthetic,” said Arthur dryly, gesturing at himself--the button-down, the jeans, the hat perched on his knee.

Charles cracked a grin. “Fair enough,” he said. “I’d like to try Alaska some time. I’ve been most everywhere else, but not even I haul shit out that far. You been?”

“Once. Went on a--well, on a wildlife photography trip with a buddy of mine, of all things. He has shit awful luck an' worse sense, so he always took me with him whenever he wanted to photograph shit that could eat him. He’s got himself a nice safe office job now, but for a while there it was a real job keepin’ him alive, let me tell you. He was after wolves, that trip. This was back in the late eighties, before the wolves came back to Yellowstone, so the only place in America to see ‘em was a zoo or Alaska. My friend bought us plane tickets an' we spent three weeks freezin’ our dicks off in the Tongass.”

“Did you get some good pictures?” 

Arthur smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “We managed it. Got a good one of a moose too, big bastard had Albert treed--”

From there, conversation between the two of them flowed almost normally. Arthur was still out of practice and clumsy but Charles was a forgiving conversationalist and had a few stories of his own to share--growing up wild in Pine Ridge, riding ponies with his cousins, driving long-hauls beside his uncle and picking up odd skills from anyone who had an odd skill to teach. (Charles could, apparently, hypnotize chickens with a piece of chalk, mirror his writing and ride a unicycle.)

Arthur was convinced, between Charles’s smile and the beer, to give up a few stories of his own. He avoided any of the blatantly illegal shit he’d gotten up to as a kid, of course, but growing up with a tree-hugging pathological liar and an anarchist for parents had given Arthur plenty of stories to tell. 

By the sixth or seventh time Jeannie came around and stared pointedly at their empty plates, Arthur was just buzzed enough to have left his nerves long behind him, comfortable and loose, his hands moving as he traced his way through another story about his wild youth. 

“--so I’m standin’ there, naked as the day I was born, hat over my--well, you know--an’ out comes old Hosea. He takes one look at me, one look at John, turns to Dutch an’ goes, _Didn’t know it was gonna be a full moon tonight, Dutch, did you_?” 

Charles was shaking with silent laughter, a hand pressed over his mouth. When he laughed like that, his eyes turned up at the corners and took some of the look of the road away from his face. 

_I kinda like it,_ thought Arthur. He wasn’t an idiot. Well, that much of one, anyway. He knew there was no point in getting _sentimental_ \--he and Charles had had one dinner together, had shared a handful of moments over coffee and in the heat of Charles’s cab. That was good, that was a start, but it wasn’t much of anything else. 

They didn’t know each other. The start of the knowing was there, in the words they’d shared and the things they had told each other. But it was new and fragile and Arthur knew he couldn’t trust it yet. He couldn’t trust the warmth in his gut or the stirrings of honest affection. 

_But that don’t mean I can’t enjoy it,_ Arthur thought. 

Finally, Arthur took pity on Jeannie and paid the bill, shouting Charles down when they squabbled over who’d pick up the tab. Arthur won, being the more sober of the two, but he graciously allowed Charles to throw a twenty on the table to cover their tip. Charles finished the last of his peach margarita, wincing at the last dregs of syrup and sugar.

“Holy shit,” said Arthur, looking down at his watch. Somehow nearly four hours had gone by.

“That late?” Charles asked, but he didn’t seem all that bothered. Conversation and food and drink had made him easy, loose and relaxed. 

“Little bit,” Arthur said ruefully. Keane’s had largely emptied out around them without either of them noticing, all but a few folks packed up and headed out for the night, back into Valentine’s dusty, firefly-strewn evening. 

“As much as I like to linger over a good meal,” Charles said, standing and stretching, “I do have to be on my way to Cholla Springs in the morning. Walk me back to Lost Country?”

“Sure.” Arthur followed suit, nervousness twinging high in his gut. _Did Charles not have a good time?_

But Charles was smiling still, even if some of his exhaustion had returned, tugged out by the alcohol and the late hour.

On impulse, Arthur offered Charles his elbow. “Let’s take the long way ‘round,” Arthur said. He wasn’t trying to be charming, not really. Just honest, about how much he liked Charles and how much he wanted to keep Charles in his company. 

Something in Charles’s face grew soft and fond. “Alright,” he said, taking Arthur’s elbow. “Take me on the grand tour.” 

The grand tour amounted to a walk down the row of dilapidated houses to the left of Keane’s, following the road to the post office and the tacky, old-timey train station that brought in tourists from bigger vacation towns like Jackson Hole and Ridgedale. From there they meandered down the townfront, enjoying the breeze and the fireflies. The stars had come out to glitter in a velvet-dark sky and the moon made Charles’s hair shine. 

They didn’t talk much, but Arthur didn’t feel like they needed to. Charles’s hand was steady in the crook of his elbow and his body was warm. That was enough for Arthur. 

They finally made it back to Lost Country after winding their way through Valentine’s meager streets, exhausting every side street and alleyway. It was late but neither of them seemed to mind, and Arthur was intent on cherishing the easy quiet between them as much as he’d liked the easy conversation too. 

Lost Country was still alive, lit up from inside. Music and shouts spilled out into the air. Uncle had been dethroned and a trio of incredibly drunk women were standing on the bar crooning along to the Dixie Chicks, and Dutch was holding court in a corner waving a mug of frothy beer over his head like a six gun. 

They lingered by the door, both clearly reluctant to go their separate ways. 

But work was work--Charles had to be off in a few scant hours, and it was so late that Arthur wasn’t going to bother driving home at all. He’d crash for the night at Hosea’s or Dutch’s place and come into work in the morning from there. 

“I had a good time,” said Arthur, sincerely. He resisted the urge to burn red or to rub his neck like a schoolboy. “And...and I’d like to do it again sometime, if, uh. If you want to.” 

Charles’s teeth shone white. “I would,” he said. 

The knot of nervousness high in Arthur’s belly eased. “Oh, good,” he said, grinning like a fool. “That’s good. I’d like that.” 

He and Charles finally separated, Arthur taking a step back towards Lost Country’s door, Charles towards the Saints Hotel.

“Wait,” said Arthur slowly, mostly just to see Charles stop mid-step, his whole body turning back towards Arthur like a compass pointing north. “This ain’t the part where I surrender my virtue, is it?”

“Nonsense,” Charles said, a smile creasing one corner of his mouth. “I’m a gentleman.” He stepped forward, leaned in and pressed what had to be the sweetest, most chaste kiss Arthur’d ever been given, hardly more than a brush of dry, warm lips, against the corner of Arthur’s mouth. The smell of his hair made Arthur dizzy. Charles’ hand was hot on his hip.

And then Charles pulled away, mischief bright in those shining dark eyes of his, and he tipped an imaginary hat. “Night, Arthur,” he said. 

Arthur stared at him. “Night,” he managed. 

Charles winked and turned, heading off in the direction of the Saints Hotel with a spring in his step and a whistle on his lips, quickly disappearing into the night. 

Arthur stared after him, absolutely thunderstruck, until Sean fucking McGuire leaned out of his car, wolf-whistled, and shouted, “Damn, son! What are ya, a delicate fookin’ flower? Go after him then!” 

With as much dignity as he could muster, Arthur flipped Sean the bird.

\---

If Arthur spent the rest of that night lying awake on Hosea’s lumpy old couch, flat on his back with a hand on his belly, and ran the edge of his thumb a time or two down the corner of his mouth where Charles’s lips had been, well. 

That was nobody’s business but Arthur’s. 

\---

Arthur would’ve worried more about the fact that neither he nor Charles had thought to set up their agreed-upon second date and hadn’t swapped phone numbers if Charles hadn’t been his first customer through the door the next morning, hair loose around his face and expression a little wild. 

As soon as he saw Arthur minding the register, Charles relaxed. “Oh, good,” he said. “You’re working today.” 

“Monday through Friday,” Arthur said. He was more awake than usual, thanks to a large cup of coffee he’d gulped down just in case Charles came in and wanted to talk. “They don’t trust me on weekends. Somethin’ about me terrorizin’ the after-church crowd, I guess.”

Charles snorted. “Understandable. So, uh. Hey.” 

Arthur smiled. “Hey,” he said. “Latte?” 

Charles nodded so Arthur got to work, foaming the milk, grabbing the caramel, putting it all together in a big mug. Charles leaned against the bar and watched. Usually when customers watched Arthur try and make shit, he felt their eyes prickle against the back of his neck, judging the way he moved, how he held himself. But with Charles Arthur felt--seen, maybe. Safe.

 _It feels good,_ Arthur thought.

He finished off the latte and poured another coffee for himself, so he could drink with Charles companionably. 

Charles took his drink and took a few sips, a small smile crossing his face. “I know we talked about it a little, but I really did have a good time last night,” he said. 

“Me too,” said Arthur. A knot in his shoulders eased. Charles had enjoyed himself. He hadn’t just been polite last night. Charles had had a good time. 

“Could stand to do it again some time,” Charles said, taking another sip of his latte. The corners of his eyes turned up, showing Arthur a smile. 

Arthur resisted the urge to grin like a fool. “Me too,” he repeated. Then he hesitated, trying to come up with an idea for a second date. “What would you--where’d you--there’s not much to do in Valentine, if you ain’t an asshole,” he said.

Charles thought for a second too, apparently coming to the same conclusion--that all Valentine had to offer were a few bars, a three-screen movie theater, and a bunch of fake touristy Wild West dinner shows--and pulled a face. 

“Damn,” he said. “Any ideas?” 

Arthur started to shake his head, and then he remembered talking to Charles about his horse, Taima. He perked up. “Come over to my place,” he said. “It ain’t far. You could see the horses. We could go riding or somethin’. I’ve got plenty of extra tack. There’s trails all through the mountains up there.”

Charles’ eyes lit up. “You sure?” he asked. 

“Yeah, it’ll do the horses good,” he said. “There’s only one’a me, I take ‘em out as much as I can but it’s hard to get ‘em all out in the same week sometimes, with work an’ all.”

“Alright,” Charles said, draining the last of his latte. “I’d love to, then. When’s good for you?”

“What’s tomorrow, Friday?” 

Charles nodded. 

“Come over on Saturday, then,” Arthur said. “Say, elevenish? That’ll give us time to saddle up and ride around a little. You want one’a the mares or a gelding?” 

“Whoever’ll take me, I guess,” said Charles. Arthur smiled. 

“We’ll introduce you on Saturday, then, get you properly acquainted. You can pick then.” 

“Sounds good to me.” 

“Here.” Arthur leaned over the bar and swiped a napkin from one of the napkin trays. He fished a pen out of his pocket and scribbled his address down, along with his phone number in case Charles needed to call. “Elevenish?” 

“Elevenish,” Charles agreed, taking the proffered napkin. Their fingertips touched and a little thrill went through Arthur. He found himself looking at Charles’ lips again, a pleasant twinge of desire stirring low in his belly. 

Charles just smiled at him, then checked his watch. “I have to go,” he said apologetically. “It’s a long ride down to Cholla Springs. Saturday, though.” 

“Saturday,” said Arthur, letting Charles go. “It’s a date.”

\---

The rest of Arthur’s shift passed in a blissful daze. Arthur didn’t snap and growl at any of the customers or terrorize Kieran when the fool boy tripped over his own feet and dropped a plate full of mugs to the ground. He hummed along when Javier came in at ten and started strumming his guitar. He tolerated the girls’ gentle teasing with good humor and caught himself--not smiling, not exactly, but looking content in the reflection of the beer fridge whenever he turned around. 

“Good god,” said Sadie when she came in at one for her shift, catching sight of Arthur leaning on his elbows and watching the shop with half-lidded eyes. “You sure move quick. Caramel Sauce Guy a good lay?”

Arthur spluttered, coming off his elbows with considerable alarm. “I don’t--the fuck are you talkin’ ‘bout?” he growled. 

Sadie grinned. Dutch had picked her up right before they’d all come to Valentine, maybe just a month or two before their troubles had all caught up with them and forced them to settle down, and six years slinging drinks had not done anything to calm Sadie down. She was a firecracker by every definition of the word, sharp and bright and mean as hell. The other women were all a hell of a lot fiercer than they looked, but Sadie was a wolf among women.

Needless to say, Arthur usually liked her very much. Sadie was the best drinking buddy a feller could ask for and she was wicked fast with a pool cue and a gun. She’d made them both a tidy little sum over the last six years hustling pool and shooting contests. Most folk were too busy sizing Arthur up to worry about Sadie, so when Sadie inevitably won she and Arthur split the profits between them. 

Right now, though, Arthur wasn’t too keen on Sadie’s particular brand of brash, rude locker room talk. He narrowed his eyes. “Ain’t like that,” he grunted. 

“No?” Sadie hopped over the bar and elbowed Arthur in the ribs. “Way Sean tells it, you were pretty much at third base in the parking lot.” 

Arthur pulled a face, determined to ignore the way his gut twinged low at the thought. “I’m too old for that shit,” he grumbled. “Can you imagine? My damn knees are so bad I’d get down there an’ not come back up.” 

“I hear some fellers are into that,” said Sadie, straight-faced, until Arthur grimaced again and she laughed. 

“Went well though? Your date, I mean?”

“Yeah,” Arthur said. His instinct had always been to say as little about his life outside the coffee shop as possible, so he leaned hard on that now. “Was nice.” 

“Well good,” said Sadie. “You goin’ out with him again?” 

“Ain’t none of your business,” Arthur replied. He paused. “But yeah. Saturday.” 

“Good for you!” 

Arthur gave her a crooked smile. “An’ that’s the last I wanna hear about it from you,” he warned, stepping back to let Sadie have the bar. He was technically a few minutes ahead of the end of his shift, but he didn’t really care. He had to go home and put his entire house back together. 

_Charles is coming over,_ he thought, and a thread of distant panic flickered to life in his head. He hadn’t had somebody over for--well, for a _date_ in the entire six years he’d lived in Ambarino. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Sadie said, waving Arthur off. “You’re a blushin’ virgin, we all know. G’wan, git. Me an’ Kieran have the bar, ain’t we, Kieran?”

Kieran, mostly recovered from his plate-dropping incident, blanched. He was as afraid of Sadie as he was of Arthur and Bill. 

“Asshole,” Arthur grumbled, taking his tips with him. 

He split the jar between himself, Kieran, Javier, Mary-Beth and Tilly, pocketing his share (a whole ten dollars) and slipping out into the parking lot. He could hear Dutch and Hosea arguing about something or other behind the closed door of Dutch’s office, but Arthur was too happy--and too worried about the state of his house--to stop and involve himself. Dutch and Hosea argued like old women.

His bike, newly repaired and threatened with a fate in the scrapyard if she acted up again, was waiting for him in the parking lot. Arthur took the short way home, intent on getting everything at least upright and uncluttered for Charles’s arrival. 

He’d been on the morning shift for a few weeks now, so life on his farm had adjusted to match his new routine. The horses and the chickens got fed the first thing in the morning, before Arthur made his way to Lost Country for the open, and then got fed again when he got back. 

The yard got mowed when the sun dropped low enough to cool off. The dogs got run whenever Arthur managed to grab himself an hour to take them loping through the fields, haring off after rabbits and badgers and whatever else they could sniff out. The barn cats were scratched and loved on according to their own schedules, and the day ended with the horses getting brushed down and watered out, Arthur checking over each and every one of them for new scrapes or sore spots. 

Thursday and Friday passed in the same way, with Arthur working in the morning and trying to put his house together in the afternoon, mowing and trimming and picking up after himself, doing the dishes, folding his laundry, dusting off his odd collection of furniture so that he looked to Charles like a functional adult man and not a six-foot-two disaster area. 

He mostly managed it. Arthur had never really been into _things,_ not really, so there wasn’t much in his house to clutter it up aside from unfolded laundry and various bits and bobs he needed for the animals. 

The only thing that managed to shake Arthur out of his own head was an odd moment on the road running a delivery out to Strawberry on Friday morning. He’d taken his bike again, keen to ride with the wind in his hair, and had just rounded the last corner in the road that led up into town when he caught sight of a feller sitting on a beat-up old Harley Fatboy, watching the road. The bike was nothing special and neither was the feller, a tallish man with a face hidden below the brim of his hat and a green bandana tied around his mouth to keep out the dust, but something about the sight of him perched at the edge of the road there like a big, ugly vulture set Arthur’s teeth on edge. 

He ran the delivery as normal, dropping off Mr. O’Leary’s weekly order of odds and ends, and left the way he came. The feller was gone by the time Arthur rumbled out of Strawberry. 

Arthur didn’t see him turn up anywhere on the road back to Valentine either, so he put the man out of his mind and went about the rest of his day. With less than twenty-four hours before he was supposed to see Charles again, Arthur had a whole herd of horses to brush out. 

When Saturday morning came around, Arthur wasn’t--prepared, exactly, but he was as ready for Charles as he was ever going to be. The chickens were tired of managing Arthur’s anxiety, at any rate, and if the chickens couldn’t even be bribed to come near and get their feathers combed out Arthur knew he was pretty much as ready as he could be.

 _Ain’t no reason to be this nervous,_ he told himself, wiping sweaty palms off on his jeans. He’d taken himself away from the barn to give the chickens some relief and was posted up on his porch, pacing back and forth across the old creaking wood on restless legs. 

_Ain’t no reason._

Charles liked Arthur’s company. They were--friendly, at the very least. They got on well. Despite their disastrous first few interactions, despite the foot Arthur seemed intent on chewing every time he talked to Charles, they got on. 

_This ain’t gonna ruin nothin’,_ Arthur told himself. _Charles likes horses. He likes to ride. This is about as risk-free of a date as I can muster. It’s gonna be fine._

He collapsed into a rickety adirondack chair with a sigh, sinking back into it as deep as he could go. Copper, his old hound, ambled over and sank down at Arthur’s feet, propping his chin up on one of Arthur’s boots. The dog looked up at him with his droopy eyes. 

“I know,” Arthur groaned, consenting to scratch Copper’s chin with the toe of his boot. “I’m bein’ ridiculous, ain’t I?” 

Copper rumbled low in his throat, satisfied that his point had been made, and closed his eyes. 

With Copper a comforting weight across Arthur’s feet, Arthur was able to sit still long enough for a cloud of dust to kick up down his winding driveway, out of which emerged a battered, off-blue Pontiac Bonneville that had to be at least as old as Arthur was, the windows rolled down and Charles in the driver’s seat, one arm hanging out the window. 

Arthur whistled to himself. He’d never been much of a car person but he could tell a classic when one was staring right at him. 

Charles waved. Arthur waved back and gestured to a stretch of gravel in front of the house. Arthur didn’t have a garage, what with the barn and all, so most visitors just parked in the gravel or the grass. 

Charles parked, cut his engine, and climbed out, shading his eyes and smiling as he looked around Arthur’s sprawling stretch of land. 

“This is beautiful,” Charles said, as Arthur carefully took his feet out from underneath Copper’s head and stood up, coming to the edge of the porch. 

“Thanks,” said Arthur, scratching his chin. “It’s a good bit’a land. Good country.” 

“Reminds me of home, a little bit.” Charles held out a hand and Copper obligingly heaved himself up and padded over for ear scratches. 

Delight kindled in Arthur’s chest. _Charles likes it._ “Well, I cain’t take credit for the mountains or nothin’,” he said, waving a hand to cover the dramatic views, the Grizzlies in their blue and grey, the softer fall of the Heartlands lying to the south, the odd mesa or butte just visible from the ridge across the plains. “Blue sky does all the hard work. I just cut the grass and run ‘round after all the animals.” 

“All this is yours?” Charles asked. Cain rounded the corner of the barn, drawn by the voices, and came crashing over for ear scratches of his own. 

“Yeah, most of it,” said Arthur. He waved a hand, gesturing at the house and the barn. “The house, the barn, and most of the lean-tos were up when I bought the place. We--me an’ John an’ Javier, mostly, though Dutch helped--put up the fences, quartered the pasture, put in the drive.” 

“And the animals?” 

“Chickens, goats and most of the horses are mine,” Arthur reported. “The dogs too, for all the good it does me. There’s a rotating collection of barn cats that comes ‘round, but they ain’t really _mine._ I just feed ‘em.” 

“Beautiful,” Charles repeated, and Arthur couldn’t help but smile. 

“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go meet the horses, yeah? Weather’s good, so we oughta get a good ride in. You need to drop anything off in the house? Need water or somethin’?” 

“Nah, I’m good,” said Charles easily. He left the dogs for a second to duck back in his car and pull out a small, battered leather bag. “Got the essentials right here.” 

“Good,” Arthur said. “C’mon over, I left some bribes by the fence. The braver horses’ll come right over to ya, but a few might need some convincin’.” 

“I can be very convincing,” Charles laughed. “Lead the way.” 

Arthur shooed the dogs off with a lazy “G’wan, git to work” and brought Charles over to the first fence, where the pasture had been cut into a large paddock blocked on one end by the barn. He’d brought most of the horses into the first quarter already, to make it easier to catch the damn things, and most were gathered under the big tree in the middle, swatting each other’s flies and lazing about in the shade. 

Only Buell and Arthur’s boarders had been left in their own pastures. Buell saw a stranger coming and screamed a challenge. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Ignore him, he ain’t sociable,” Arthur said, bringing Charles up to the fence. He unhooked the bucket, which he’d filled that morning with scraps of apple and carrot, and offered it to Charles. “They’re all real into food, so we’ll get a couple to come over and say hi no problem.”

“I’m not worried,” Charles said, taking the bucket.

“Well you ain’t met ‘em yet,” Arthur said, amused. “C’mere,” Arthur added, clicking his tongue against his teeth, and the bravest of his horses finally gave in, picking their way over to the fence to see what Arthur and Charles had for them. 

Hemingway, Magnolia and Reliance all wandered over together, despite Rooster’s furious, snorting protests. Blue, Kestrel and Cloudrunner made interested faces but didn’t risk it. Buell reared up at the edge of his own paddock and flashed his hooves and Lyra ignored them all, delicately turning her head away and nibbling on some grass instead. 

“Who’s this then?” said Charles softly, holding still for long enough for Hemingway to lean over the fence and snuffle at him curiously, lipping Charles’s forehead and tugging a bit at his flannel shirt. 

“This is Hemingway,” Arthur said fondly, letting the little gelding make nice. “The feller I got him from swears that he’s all mustang, but he’s got a muleish look to me. Steady as anything, though.” 

“I can see that.” Hemingway had found the treats in Charles’s pocket and was nibbling at them very gently, his tail twitching and his ears forward, alert. He wasn’t a big horse, Hemingway, but he was solid and strong when he wanted to be. For Charles, though, he was as gentle as a lamb. 

“The big piebald girl is my Magnolia,” Arthur said, as Charles scratched Hemingway’s forelock and moved down the line with a slice of apple in his hand. Maggie put her head over the fence and whickered all friendly-like, though she was just as driven to get a hold of the snack as Hemingway was. “She’s a Halfbred, come out of Amish country ‘cause she cain’t work a field or pull a buggy no more.”

“Hello, beautiful,” Charles crooned, and Arthur went red all the way down to his belly. 

_I didn’t know that Charles could sound so sweet,_ he thought, a little dazed. 

“The other’s named Reliance,” Arthur continued, his voice a little rougher than before. “Found her wanderin' all by her lonesome in a field not too far from here, but she’s a good horse. I call her Lia, which gets a bit confusing ‘cause the pretty white filly over there showin’ you her asshole is Lyra.”

Charles offered Reliance a slice of apple and she took it from him with all the daintiness of a great lady, lipping his fingers before retreating a few steps to enjoy her treat in peace. 

“And the rest?” Charles asked. 

Arthur smiled. He shaded his eyes, flicking a hand to indicate the far paddock, where Buell was stamping and pacing the length of fence, eyeing them all with fire in his eyes. “That’s Buell, my first,” he said. “He’s a miserable bastard. The others out in the middle paddock ain’t mine--I board ‘em for some of the other fellers. The shiny silver one is Hosea’s, the flaxen John’s, and the big old brown Ardennes is Bill’s. You meet Bill yet?” 

“The big guy? Mostly bald, pretty rude, drunk all the time?”

“Yeah,” said Arthur fondly. “That’s him. He don’t love much of anythin’ but that horse. Brown Jack, he’s called.” 

“And the rest of yours?”

“Well the little white and the little brindle are Lyra and Rooster,” said Arthur, leaning against the fence to better point them out. Hemingway drifted in again and butted his nose against Arthur’s cheek, demanding affection. 

“Arabians?”

“Think so,” Arthur said. “I ain’t ever had their bloodlines checked or nothin’. They weren’t in a good spot either, when I found ‘em. I don’t show ‘em an’ I don’t race ‘em, so what kind of horse they are ain’t matter much to me.” 

“Fair point,” Charles allowed. 

“The tall, leggy grey brindle is Cloudrunner, a thoroughbred,” Arthur continued. “Got her at the same time as John got his Old Boy, the both of us cheatin' our asses off at the poker table. And the buckskin with the devil eyes is Blue.” 

“They’re all beautiful,” Charles said. “I can’t believe you can keep up with all of this. They look amazing.” 

“Aw, ‘s nothin’,” Arthur said. He scratched his chin, pleased that Charles thought so well of all the horses. “They mostly look after themselves, with the space I’ve got. They only need a little bit of feedin’ in the mornin’ and at night and then some work throughout the week. Buell’s an old man so he only needs to stomp around a little before he wears himself out, and the rest get enough work to be happy.” 

“How do you work ‘em?” Charles asked curiously. His eyes had fallen on Magnolia, which Arthur couldn’t blame him for. Maggie was a big, powerful horse, trim despite her ability to work, her cheeks a striking shaded bay that Arthur fell in love with each time he caught sight of them. 

“Trail ridin’, mostly, though there’s some ranchers hereabouts I lend ‘em to when it’s time to move the herds around,” said Arthur. “I’ve got steady horses, for the most part. An' they like to keep busy. The horses, I mean.” 

“I can’t blame them,” Charles said admiringly. He held a hand out over the fence and coaxed Maggie back. She submitted to cheek scritches tamely. 

“You picked, then?” Arthur asked. Charles was obviously taken with Maggie, if the way he was loving on her was any indication. 

Charles nodded. “If I won’t hurt her?” 

“Nah,” Arthur said. “She ain’t lame, just cain’t pull a buggy all day long without gettin’ abscesses ‘neath her shoes. A bit of trail won’t kill her. She’d probably like the change of scenery--she an' I don’t get out much.” 

“Then I’ll take her,” said Charles, tickling Magnolia underneath the chin. 

“Great. I’ll take…” Arthur did a quick look-over of the rest of his herd, trying to judge who’d be the best fit for Magnolia. Cloudrunner was of a height but was fast as fuck when she got going. Rooster and Lyra were right out, temperamental beasts that they were, and while Hemingway was sweet and mild he was also tiny and couldn’t always keep up with the pace of the bigger horses.

“Blue,” Arthur decided. Despite his unnerving eyes, Blue was a steady horse and always game for the trail, though he spooked like the devil had got into him any time he saw, or thought he saw, a snake. Arthur tossed Charles one of the halters he’d left hanging around a fence post, then heaved himself over the fence and clicked his tongue in Blue’s direction. 

Blue put his ears back, wary, but he wasn’t too temperamental and he liked work well enough that he didn’t try and bolt when Arthur slipped the halter over his head and began to lead him back to the fence, where Charles had a hold on Magnolia. 

“Do any of your friends come up here and work the horses?” Charles asked, when Arthur was close again. 

Arthur shrugged. “Sometimes, yeah. Bill, John, Hosea, they’re all up here a few times a week. Javier brings his girlfriend, sometimes. Dutch’ll come by once or twice a month. Kieran--the nervous feller, always droppin’ shit?--he really likes horses, so he’s out a lot whenever he thinks I’m not here to yell at him.” 

“And your horses and your friends all get along?”

Arthur laughed. “Hell no,” he said. He turned around, jerked his chin at Lyra and Rooster, who were still watching Charles distrustfully from the shadow of the old tree. “Lyra, there? She bit Micah so bad once he needed seventeen stitches, and the first time John got into the paddock with Rooster, Rooster had him stuck up that tree in about ten seconds. Kept him up there for nearly five hours, ‘til I got home and drove him off.” 

“Sounds like you have some smart horses,” said Charles dryly. Charles had met both John and Micah by now and while John was alright most of the time, if obnoxious, Charles and Micah apparently didn’t get on. 

“They’re alright,” Arthur allowed, grinning fondly. His horses’ blatant dislike of Micah was a sign of good judgement on their part. “The dogs ain’t like Micah much neither. An’ Marston’s alright, just an asshole. Roose put him in his place the once and mostly leaves him alone now. ” 

“Will you keep all of the horses?” Charles wanted to know, still scritching at Maggie’s cheek. 

“Nah, not usually,” Arthur admitted. As much as he loved the silly things, keeping up with more than a few of them for a long time wasn’t realistic. “I usually keep the more mellow ones for six months or so, maybe a year if they need the work, then sell ‘em on. Sold a few to some Why-Em-Cee-Ay camps, a couple to a feller who ranches down in New Hanover. I’ve had a few go to families with young kids who need a starter horse.”

“Do you do that with all of them?”

Arthur thought of some poor five-year-old trying to keep seat on Rooster and snorted. “Nah,” he said. “Only the horses who can handle it, mostly. Some of ‘em I’ll keep ‘til I die--old Buell over there, Rooster and Lyra, Blue. I ain’t too sure ‘bout sellin’ Maggie on neither, but that’s just ‘cause she’s so sweet.” 

“You are a sweetheart,” Charles crooned, moving his hand up to scratch Magnolia’s forelock. The big horse had the gall to close her eyes in pleasure and sigh, head going low and loose. 

Arthur’s mouth dried out. _Wonder if Charles’ll do that to me, if I ask,_ he thought, and then had to look away to hide the red creeping up the back of his neck. 

_This is only your second time out with the man,_ he scolded himself. _Keep it to goddamn gether._

“Tack’s in the barn,” Arthur grunted, carefully keeping his face turned so that Charles couldn’t see the mixed desire and embarrassment in Arthur’s eyes. “C’mon, I’ll get the gate.” 

Arthur opened the gate for Charles, so he could come in and take Maggie in hand properly, and the pair of them made their way across the paddock to the barn, where a few stalls opened up into the paddock to help make loading the horses easier. 

Once Maggie and Blue were tied in their stalls, Arthur took Charles inside, scattering the lazy cats with a “ _Hsst!_ Get back to work!” and bringing him to the tack room, where Arthur left Charles to his own devices and went to brush down the horses. 

Charles came back with the usual trail gear. He took over brushing Maggie down, paying careful, sweet attention to picking out her hooves, making sure that she carried no stones that could rub and abscess, and had her tacked up and ready just as Arthur finished cinching the girth around Blue. 

“All set?” Arthur asked. 

Charles nodded, patting Maggie’s shoulders. “After you,” he said. 

Arthur took Blue’s reins and brought the horse outside. He did a quick check of his saddlebags, making sure he had all he needed--a trail kit, a bit of first aid, some rope and some snacks, a few bottles of water for himself and Charles--and mounted up. 

“You have a lot of trails around here?” Charles asked, swinging up onto Magnolia’s saddle with an easy, practiced grace that Arthur desperately tried to ignore. 

“Fair few, yeah,” he said. “Most of the land ‘round here is Bee-Ell-Em, so there’s ranch trails and access roads all through it. You want a gentle ride or somethin’ a little more adventurous?”

“Both?” Carles hazarded, guiding Magnolia along after Blue with a hand at her neck. “But it’s been a minute for me.” 

“We can start easy,” Arthur promised. He angled Blue to the west, towards Cotorra Springs. “Then, if you’re up for it, we can get a little crazy.” 

“You’re on,” said Charles, the corners of his eyes turning up in delight. 

Arthur grinned. “Yah,” he said, nudging Blue with his heels, and the old racer tossed his head and took off at a measured clip, his gait as smooth and sweet as river water. 

As they rode, Arthur snuck a few glances at Charles, just trying to make sure that he was alright. His seat was good--better than Arthur’s, honestly--and he was straight-backed and easy, his hips rolling in time with Maggie’s canter to keep him deep in the saddle. His heels were tucked down, one hand loose on the reins and the other on one of Charles’s thighs. His head was up to catch the wind. 

Affection stirred in Arthur’s chest. 

_He knows what he’s doin’,_ Arthur thought, and urged Blue a little faster. He didn’t often ride with other good horsemen. Hosea was excellent, having spent some time on the rodeo circuit in his wild youth, but he was a bit too old to take a fall nowadays and so mostly confined his riding to a gentle lope. John could ride in the sense that he could sit atop a horse long enough to get from one place to another, and Bill usually rode drunk, which meant that he usually fell on his ass a few times. 

Charles, though, Charles was a natural, and more than that Arthur could tell that he was _practiced._ Charles liked to ride. Natural skill was all well and good but a truly good rider rode whenever they could. 

_Charles is good,_ Arthur thought. _He’s really good._

They rode in companionable quiet for a time, the only sounds between them the drum of the horses’ hooves or an occasional direction--left here at the dirt track leading to the bridge over the river, right at the fork, straight ahead towards the shimmering mist coming up off the springs. 

When they reached Cotorra, Charles whistled appreciatively. There were a few other riders out here--usually were, most days--and a few grimy-looking hikers who were attempting the through-hike from Blackwater to Annesburg, but other than that they had the springs to themselves. 

It was hot up here in early June, the sun beating down on them and heat rumbling up through the ground, occasionally bursting through in steaming geysers of white water, but they were high enough up that a decent wind wicked away the worst of the heat. 

“I had no idea this was up here,” Charles said, pulling Maggie up so he could ride side-by-side with Arthur. Somewhere up in the higher mountains, a bull elk called out to his rivals. Birds wheeled up against the sky. 

Charles gestured north with the reins. “I ride the highway up there all the time,” he said. “But I had no idea.” 

“‘S kind of a hidden gem,” Arthur said. “Most folks, if they wanna see geysers, go out to Yellowstone. There ain’t much up here for tourists, not even that many campgrounds. Closest town is Bacchus Station and that’s more a rest stop than anything else. Only the locals can really get up here.” 

“Can we swim in the springs?” 

“In the winter, yeah,” said Arthur. He’d done it a few times, usually drunk with a few of the other fellers, once with Mary-Beth and Tilly. “The springs are nice. There’s a couple that are too hot, but the rest’re just fine.” 

“Remind me to come back,” Charles said, eyeing the water thoughtfully. 

Arthur’s stomach jolted. _He wants to come back,_ Arthur thought. Winter was four, five months away--the snows didn’t come ‘til late October most years.

“What?” Charles asked, tone amused. He was looking at Arthur and it was only then that Arthur realized that he was smiling like an idiot.

Arthur coughed into his hand. “Nothin’,” he mumbled. “Jus’ glad you like it, is all. Now, from here we got a couple’a choices. We can go north up to the reservoir an' Wapiti, or further east followin’ the Grizzlies to Window Rock. ‘S up to you.” 

“Let’s go to Window Rock,” said Charles decisively. “I’ve only ever seen it from the highway--it’d be nice to get closer. How long a ride is it?” 

“From here? ‘Bout an hour, maybe a little more. I brought snacks if you’re hungry, an' water too.” 

Charles nodded. “I’m game if you are, then,” he said. 

“Trail’s gonna be a little rougher,” Arthur warned, mostly just to make sure Charles knew what he was getting into. He had no doubt that Charles would do just fine, good a seat as he had atop Maggie’s back. 

“I don’t mind it rough,” said Charles, his smile turning sly. 

Arthur huffed a startled laugh. “Jesus, alright then,” he said. “Let’s get goin’. Follow me.” 

This time he didn’t hold back on Blue, didn’t bother keeping the horse at a canter. Blue’s gallop was as smooth as the rest of his gaits, his long legs eating up the trail, and Magnolia could use the run. He heard Charles’s breathless laugh behind him and grinned. 

They slowed eventually, of course, given that they had almost a two-hour ride back to Arthur’s house and it’d be stupid to burn the horses out before they’d turned around for home. They fell into a trot again a few miles past Cotorra Springs and enjoyed the trail at a slower pace, chatting as they rode side-by-side close enough for their feet to knock together whenever Blue swayed to avoid a suspicious stick or Maggie skirted a rock in the trail. 

Charles had half-grown up on horseback, Arthur learned. Nobody where he was from was real big on cars, so most everyone rode horses. Nokotas were favored, which made Arthur insanely jealous--he’d seen a pretty little white roan Nokota at an auction once, but had already spent his money on snapping up Magnolia--but Charles himself preferred paints and appys. His horse Taima was his pride and joy--he’d had her since he was twenty years old and stupid with it, and he’d bet all the money he’d had on a poker game against Taima. 

“I won the game,” Charles said proudly, “which was good, ‘cause I really needed the money.”

“Who keeps Taima for you when you’re out workin’?” Arthur asked curiously. 

“I’ve still got cousins on the rez who look after her for a month or two at a time,” Charles said. “I don’t like leaving her with anybody for too long, since it costs so damn much to feed her, but most don’t mind having her around. She’s a good horse.” 

“Must be, if you’ve had her what, goin’ on twelve years?” 

Charles was thirty-two, which Arthur was very determinedly not thinking about because he didn’t want to feel that old. Arthur was just a few years older, true, but he felt sometimes that a few years could be as insurmountable as a canyon without a bridge and he was trying to enjoy himself, damnit, and not collapse into melancholy where Charles could see. 

“Something like that, yeah,” Charles said. 

Arthur shook his head. “If Buell lives that long, it might kill me,” he admitted. “I only done five years with the bastard an' it’s come pretty close a time or two.” 

Charles laughed. 

They stopped after an hour or so and shared a bit of venison jerky that Arthur’d dried himself after deer season last year. That got Charles talking about hunting, and the rest of the ride passed with pleasant talk of learning to hunt, Charles at his uncles’ knees and Arthur with Hamish, who’d finally managed to teach Arthur the patience to stalk, to wait, to watch and listen. 

“We’ll have to go sometime, then,” Charles said happily. “I like hunting--makes me feel like I’m doing my part to keep the natural order of things, you know? It’s gotta be better for the environment to hunt your own dinner instead of ordering it in all the way from China or Brazil.” 

“Sounds good to me, if you ain’t mind that I usually fall asleep somewhere in the middle,” Arthur said, making Charles laugh, and then they rounded the trail and found themselves looking up at Window Rock, the sky blue and clear right through to the other side. 

Arthur wasn’t a religious man--never had been, though he’d had more than a few foster families try and push him into it, thinking that maybe a little dose of old-time religion would cure Arthur of his wild and unsociable ways--but even he felt the hand of--something, in the shape of that rock, in the way the sky shone through it and the rest of Ambarino spilled down beyond, sweet and wild even in nineteen ninety-six. 

Charles was similarly awestruck, quiet and reverent as he urged Magnolia up the trail, closer to the rock. Arthur let him lead, falling in behind. He’d seen Window Rock before up close. He’d even camped out here once, beneath the shadow of the rock, and had spent a night listening to the wind sing through the gap, a strange and wonderful song that had raised all the hairs on the back of Arthur’s neck. 

There was a little plaque on the side of the trail, announcing Window Rock’s status as a Historical Monument to the State of Ambarino. 

Arthur let Charles look around at his own pace, taking in the striking red-and-black paintings on the rock’s flanks, the whistling wind, the names carved into the rock to mark two hundred years of visitors. If this had been their first date Arthur would’ve been bothered by the silence, but he didn’t feel like he had to invent a conversation, not out here on horseback. If Charles had something to say he’d say it. If not, a little bit of companionable silence was just fine. 

Finally, Charles had taken in his fill. “Thank you for bringing me here,” he said, very seriously. 

Arthur flushed. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “There’s a lot to see out here, if you’ve got a horse to make the seein’ easy. My, uh, my pleasure.”

“I’ll have to return the favor sometime, get you up to the Dakotas,” Charles said with a faint smile, breaking some of the solemn mood. “You ever spent a night out in the Badlands?”

Arthur shook his head, giddy all over again. _Christ, I’m acting like a teenager. Worse, I think--I wasn’t this bad as a teenager._

“It’s like nothing else,” Charles promised. Then he shaded his eyes and looked at the western sky, hissed, sucked his teeth. “We better get going,” he said, regretfully. “Looks like there’s a storm comin’ in.” 

Arthur turned around and sure enough there were sullen grey clouds gathering over the mountain tops, fat and swollen with rain. Arthur scowled. 

_And we were havin’ such a nice time._ He’d been about to suggest that they go down the mountain flanks and ride along the river for a bit, but he didn’t want to be caught in a gully during a summer storm. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “C’mon. With luck we’ll get back okay.” 

They didn’t have any luck. They made it about an hour, an hour and a half back on the trail ahead of the storm, got within five miles of Arthur’s house, but the rain caught them all at once in a sudden, sheeting downpour that startled Blue and had Arthur wet to his skin in seconds, water coming off his hat in a great blinding curtain. 

“Son of a _bitch,_ ” Arthur growled. 

But over the rain, he heard Charles laughing. 

“C’mon,” Arthur called, pitching his voice to rise above the downpour. “Ain’t far now. You can dry off in the house. We’ll take the horses in the barn.” 

“Lead the way!” Charles shouted back, and Arthur did, nudging Blue faster, though he was careful of the mud. Last thing he needed was to pitch head over heels off Blue’s shoulders because the damn horse had slipped in a slick spot. 

They were back at Arthur’s barn within another half hour, though the rain didn’t let up and in fact followed them the whole way, soaking them relentlessly. The rest of Arthur’s horses had had the sense to take cover, packing themselves in the lean-tos or underneath the big tree, and Blue and Maggie didn’t fight as Arthur and Charles brought them into the barn. 

The dogs had come in too, as had most of the cats and all of the chickens. In stormy weather all of Arthur’s animals knew to observe a ceasefire of hostilities, lest Arthur lock them outside in the rain, so none of the cats had tried to savage a chicken and neither of the dogs had helped themselves to a cat. 

“Jesus, that was somethin’ else,” Arthur grumbled, tossing his hat up onto a bale of hay to dry and shaking his head like a dog, water going everywhere. 

Charles laughed and wrung his braid out. “Your hair’s longer than I thought,” he remarked, patting Maggie’s rump. “It’s nice.” 

“Oh, uh, thanks,” Arthur said, caught off guard. He pushed his hair back into its usual arrangement, trying to keep the rain out of his eyes. “You wanna get the horses’ tack off, then head in to dry?”

“Sounds good,” Charles said agreeably. “Same place I found it?” 

Arthur nodded. They stripped the horses down efficiently, leaving the saddlebags out on haybales to dry and stowing the saddles. Anything else that had been soaked through Arthur draped over various railings while Charles worked the worst of the mud out of the horses’ manes and tails. After carrying him for most of the day Magnolia was sweet as peaches to Charles, lipping him affectionately as he worked the tangles out of her mane, and Blue had decided that Charles was an acceptable person to hang around and kept nudging him, searching for treats. 

Finally the horses were taken care off and Arthur and Charles made a run for the house, not that it did them any good. 

“Today of all days it decides to flood my fuckin’ field,” Arthur grumbled. “No rain for two damn weeks, but as soon as I’m out havin’ a good time...”

“I don’t mind,” Charles said with a laugh, as they crested the porch and scrambled into Arthur’s house, dripping everywhere. They were very close here, packed into the cramped front hall, neither willing to move any deeper in the house until they weren’t quite so soaked. “And I had a good time while the weather held. You got a dryer?”

“I do,” Arthur said. Standing this close he could see those scars on Charles’s face again, thin and white like old lightning, the split eyebrow that was somehow stupidly charming, the solid strength of his shoulders, his arms, his thick waist. 

Charles’s proximity was dizzying. His shirt was soaked and clinging, the shape of Charles apparent, his broad chest, his thick, strong legs, and Arthur had to blink a few times and pull back a little before he did something really stupid. 

_Two dates,_ he told himself sternly. _Two dates with the man. He’s only kissed you the once._

 _But if you kissed him again he’d taste like rain,_ Arthur’s traitorous brain whispered, like this was some kind of--some kind of goddamn movie, where Arthur lived the kind of life that meant he got to kiss people in the rain. 

He turned aside. “Bathroom’s, uh, bathroom’s down the hall, to the right,” he said. “Through the master. You can grab some clothes out of my closet if you want, while we dry yours, we oughta be close in size.” 

“Oh,” said Charles, and a strange look passed over his face. He let Arthur pull away. His dark eyes were unreadable. “Thanks.” 

“Welcome,” said Arthur, waving him on, and took a detour into the living room to riffle through the closet for a towel. He heard the floorboards creak as Charles made his way down the hall, the master bedroom door opening, the bathroom door closing. 

He sighed in relief. 

_I gotta watch myself,_ Arthur thought. _I don’t--I don’t wanna drive Charles off._

He was just so damn out of _practice._ The last serious relationship he’d had--not counting Eliza, because they’d never really been _together,_ just raising a son together and sharing a bed every now and again when one of them got too lonely to stand it--had been with Mary, and that had been-shit, that had been back in the early eighties, before Isaac had even been born. 

He’d done--mostly the right things, with Mary. She’d been a patient teacher up until she couldn’t handle Arthur’s life anymore, the traveling and the roaming and the odd jobs he’d pick up and drop whenever the mood struck him. She’d hated the way he’d lived, the fights he got into, the bruises on his knuckles and his cheekbones. 

But before things had finally fallen apart between them, she’d taught Arthur how to properly court a person. Lunch dates, nights out on the town, a trail ride or two if the person was so inclined. Mary had liked to ride the highways on the back of Arthur’s motorcycle, pressed snug up against his back, her arms around his waist. 

He couldn’t imagine Charles wanting to do _that,_ and trying to imagine it made Arthur’s dick twitch in his sodden jeans. 

_I’m so out of practice I’m gonna scare him off before we can get to really know each other,_ Arthur thought. It had happened before. Sour, Arthur dug out a towel and dragged it roughly through his hair, kicking his boots off and throwing them over by the front door. He shed his flannel and listened hard--it sounded like the bathroom door was still shut, so he shucked off his soaked tee-shirt too and wrapped the towel around his shoulders, heading for the bedroom. 

He checked before he went in, of course, to make sure he didn’t surprise Charles, and slunk in, riffling through his closet. 

He grabbed the first shirt he could find, a holey grey henley that he really ought to put out with the trash, and was in the process of tugging it over his head when the bathroom door opened and Charles stepped out, wearing nothing but his wet jeans and a fierce expression, his jeans riding low on his hip. 

Arthur froze. 

“Uh,” he said. 

“Arthur,” Charles said, and his voice was a deep rumble. Arthur felt it coil low in his gut. 

He couldn’t take his eyes off the cut of Charles’s hips. 

_You’ve gotta move, you idiot,_ he told himself, trying to bring his head up to look Charles in the eye, to turn aside to give the man some privacy, to do _something_ other than stare like a slack-jawed moron. _You’ve gotta move, you’re gonna fuck it all up_ \--

“Arthur,” Charles said again, in that same deep, powerful voice. This time Arthur managed to tear his eyes away from Charles’s hips, his belly, and meet Charles’s eyes.

His breath caught.

Arthur took one look at Charles and knew what was about to happen. He couldn’t help it. Whatever it was inside him that had been building to this since the first second he’d seen Charles walk through the door of Lost Country, LLC at five o’clock in the morning was surging up like a flash flood, a wildfire, and Arthur couldn’t stop it. 

He didn’t want to stop it. 

He took a hesitant step towards Charles, letting the shirt fall from his hands, and Charles stepped to meet him with the same bright, fierce certainty burning in his own face, and then they were in the middle of Arthur’s bedroom kissing, desperately kissing, Charles’s hands winding into Arthur’s still-wet hair and Arthur’s flicking restlessly over Charles’s body, tracing the cut of his hips, skimming his ribs, catching the flat, muscular planes of his shoulder blades. 

_This ain’t no chaste see-you-goodnight kiss,_ Arthur managed to think, dizzy. After their dinner at Keane’s Charles had been sweet, gentle. He was still sweet, his mouth open and inviting against Arthur’s, but _chaste_ seemed to have gone right out the window. 

This kiss was hungry. Arthur wanted to fall into it and never come out--he _was_ falling into it, Charles nipping hot and playful at his bottom lip, his tongue sliding over Arthur’s teeth. 

Arthur finally found a place to settle his hands, one bracketing each of Charles’s hips, and leaned into the kiss with his whole body. Warmth sparked through him every place they touched. His fingertips were on fire. His lips burned. 

“Thought I’d read that right,” Charles said, breaking the kiss for some air, his voice heavy with satisfaction. 

“Shuddup,” Arthur growled, reeling him in closer. Charles still had his hands in Arthur’s hair and tugged experimentally, gentle but unrelenting. Arthur’s whole body shivered. “C’mere.” 

“Easy, now,” said Charles, eyes sparkling, like Arthur was an unruly horse or a stray dog, and Arthur flashed his teeth. Charles gave in then, came back, kissed Arthur again. He nudged Arthur with a thigh and encouraged him back. Arthur trusted him and went, just pleased to be able to keep touching him. 

_What’s goin’--oh,_ Arthur thought, as Charles backed him up until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the bed. _Oh._

Charles pushed again, very gently, giving Arthur the choice to stay on his feet or go backwards onto the bed. 

Arthur didn’t hesitate. He knew what he wanted. He let Charles push him down, breath puffing out as his back hit the mattress, and Charles followed fast, too fast for Arthur to do much more than take another sharp, deep breath before Charles was on him, over him, all around him. 

Arthur quickly lost track of time. He didn’t know how long they laid there in his bed, still in their soaking-wet jeans, kissing and petting and rocking lazily together like horny teenagers. Every time Arthur tried to get his thoughts in order Charles would do-- _something,_ like nip at Arthur’s bottom lip hard enough to sting or tweak a nipple, rock their hips together so that his dick slid deliciously up against Arthur’s and made all of Arthur’s thoughts and plans fly apart in his head like white-hot sparks. 

Eventually Arthur managed to hang on to enough presence of mind to get a hand between them and start undoing his belt, which he was sure was starting to dig against Charles’s belly. 

Charles put one of his own big hands there, holding Arthur’s hand where it was. 

For some reason that was the most obscene thing that they’d done so far, Charles trapping Arthur’s hand against his own belly, just inches above his hard cock. Arthur moaned softly, shocked and red. 

Charles smiled down at him. “Hold on,” he said. 

“No,” Arthur growled. Two could play at this game; he leaned back into the bed to give himself some leverage and then did this little rolling hip trick he’d picked up from a rodeo cowboy in Reno a few years ago, bucking his hips like an eager filly. 

“ _Christ,”_ Charles growled, and that was a victory. Arthur’s blood surged in triumph. 

Charles leaned into him, arranging his own weight so that he pressed down on Arthur from nearly everywhere, panting against Arthur’s neck. From here Arthur could see a shallow scar along Charles’s left collarbone. He wanted to lick it. 

“You are something else,” said Charles raggedly, dropping a kiss in the hollow of Arthur’s throat. He didn’t take his hand off Arthur’s. “I’m just trying to--I wanted to check--are you good?”

“Yes,” Arthur growled, craning his head to nip at Charles’s chin. Arthur was a strong man. He could throw Charles off of himself if he wanted to. 

But he didn’t want to.

“Yes, I’m goddamn good. Are you--” he forced himself to pull back, to stare up blindly at the ceiling. “You good? Are you good?” 

“Yeah, I’m good.” Charles kissed Arthur’s neck then, lingering long like he was thinking of biting to draw blood or maybe to suck a bruise there, high up enough where everyone could see. 

Arthur groaned deeply. He was going to die if Charles stopped. He was going to die if Charles kept going. 

“You wanna--you wanna keep going?” Charles panted, starting to roll his hips again. The friction was wet, filthy. Arthur was shocked by how good it was. How much he wanted it. “‘Cause I’d really like to--I’d really like to fuck you, if you want me to, but I wanna make sure--”

“Christ,” Arthur hissed, high and wanting. He--yes, he wanted that. He wanted that. But Charles needed to hear it, so he forced his thoughts into order, forced his mouth to obey. “Yes,” Arthur murmured, pressing his mouth against Charles’s collarbone. He didn’t want to take his mouth away--the taste of Charles’s skin was the only thing that mattered to him now, salt and musk, the cool ridge of a scar pressed against his tongue. “Yes, Charles, _please._ ” 

Charles’s eyes were nearly black with desire and he took his hand off of Arthur’s, let Arthur fumble with his belt buckle, his jeans. Charles gave Arthur enough room to get his own jeans off too, everything falling in a wet heap to the floor, and then they were back on each other, skin to skin, sparks flickering behind Arthur’s eyes. 

“Okay,” Charles said, and his hands were back, his scent everywhere, everything about him overwhelming and wonderful and _more,_ Arthur needed more-- 

“I have you,” Charles whispered, as his hands petting soothingly over Arthur’s ribs and down his stomach, thumbing the edges of Arthur’s tattoos, lower and lower until Arthur thought he’d die just from the touch of Charles’s hands alone. 

“I have you, Arthur, it’s okay.” 

“Less talkin’,” Arthur managed to rasp, his own hands shaking and everywhere, unable to find their favorite spot on Charles’s body. “C’mere.” 

Eyes shining in the dark, Charles did. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: 
> 
> More explicit description of Arthur's childhood, including time in the foster care system and time in juvenile detention. Ditto for Charles. Mentions of alcohol use. Mentions of mild drug use (marijuana). This chapter features fairly explicit content, and also features a character on the ace/grey/demisexuality spectrum engaging in and enjoying sex. 
> 
> Magnolia is a piebald Hungarian Halfbred.  
> Blue is a silver tail buckskin American Standardbred, though he has a black tail because I thought the silver tail looked goofy. 
> 
> Sean's neck tattoo is a Red Hand of Ulster. Arthur's tats are To Be Revealed. 
> 
> Thank you so much for all of your support so far!! I am having a blast and I hope you are too. As always, if you have any questions, drop a line!


	4. lost country: iv

Arthur was old enough to know that he wasn’t really a “breakfast in bed” kind of feller. He’d tried it a couple of times over the years, first with Mary and then Eliza, but breakfast in bed the morning after a good fuck had been one of those little rituals Arthur could never quite get the hang of. He could manage the bacon and eggs just fine, but he burned the hash browns or made the French toast too soggy, and somehow he always managed to spill orange juice on the bed or drop a mug of hot coffee somewhere no one ever wanted a mug of hot coffee dropped. 

Arthur’d just never been particularly romantic, and the rituals of a traditional romance were all just a little bit beyond him, just out of his reach lost somewhere in his childhood. 

Despite knowing this, every now and again Arthur found himself in bed with the right person and was struck by the urge to--feed them, maybe, or care for them somehow, to make up for whatever he’d managed to get wrong the night before. 

So that was how he found himself standing barefoot in his kitchen at six-thirty the morning after he and Charles had tumbled into bed together, fingerprint bruises riding low on his hips, half-asleep and staring into the depths of his fridge. 

_I live like a goddamn animal,_ Arthur thought. He’d seen more to eat in the middle of the fucking desert. Arthur, examining his fridge to its rusty baseboards, had a bottle of Cholula, half a package of vaguely green cotija cheese from the H-E-B over in Emerald Ranch, two cans of some weird, agave-infused experimental beer Javier’d left here last time he’d minded the horses, and a single, lonely yellow onion. 

Arthur closed the fridge with a sigh.

 _Just as well,_ he thought. Arthur was more familiar with this part of the story than the mythical eggs-and-toast in bed part. Down the hall he could hear Charles stirring, climbing out of bed as the mattress groaned like an old dog. When Charles put his feet down on the floor the boards creaked tiredly, loose with leftover evening chill. 

Arthur heard Charles yawn mightily, stumble into the bathroom, and stub his toe on the doorframe with a thump and a sleepy swear. The shower moaned and water spluttered, the pipes rattling awake. 

_Guess he probably wants to get out on the road,_ Arthur thought. He considered being sour about it but decided that he was too old for that shit and set his sourness aside. He didn’t have anything to offer Charles if he stayed, anyway. No breakfast, not even coffee. 

Arthur gave up on his fridge and padded towards the bathroom. He could at least be helpful and shake Charles’s clothes out while Charles showered, give him some dry things to wear if his clothes from yesterday were still wet with rain, seeing as Arthur'd never made it out of bed and down to the dryer. 

He began the slow, careful task of collecting every bit of clothing that they had discarded in their haste to get to the bed. Everything Arthur touched brought back a sense memory--the tinny clink of Charles’s belt sliding to the floor, the rustle of wet jeans being shucked off, the remembered heat of Charles’s hand pressed over Arthur’s, belt buckle digging into his palms. 

_Bad,_ Arthur told himself, pushing down the heat that was starting to build in his belly. _If you cain’t give the man breakfast, you cain’t ask to suck him off in the shower neither. That’s just bad manners._

Thinking about _that_ \--slick tile, slick heat, Charles’s hands tangling into Arthur’s hair--did absolutely nothing to improve Arthur’s situation, so he thought it completely understandable that he didn’t hear the shower shut off, busy as he was trying not to get hard in his pants like a randy teenager, until Charles cracked the bathroom door open and let steam spill out in a sweet cloud, his hair a bit frazzled and his cheeks flushed with warmth. 

“Hey,” said Charles, smiling when he caught sight of Arthur standing there with a pile of damp clothes in his arms. “You hungry?” 

“Uh,” Arthur said. He was thrown again. “Yes?” 

“Good,” said Charles brightly. There was a hickey on Charles’s shoulder laid right over his collarbone, and it was flushed so dark that staring at it made all of Arthur’s careful thoughts abandon him wholesale. “I’m off the next two days. Wanna head out, find something to eat, then come back here?” 

“Back here?” Arthur asked, a little bewildered. _This ain’t how it goes,_ he thought. He tried to order things. The progression of their--acquaintance, he settled on--had been mostly normal, if a bit faster than what Arthur was used to. Arthur had seen Charles in the shop, had wanted him, and he and Charles had spent enough time together that Charles had wanted him too.

And now they’d had each other, and Arthur wasn’t the “breakfast in bed” type. He wasn’t the “go out and get breakfast after” type either, long years had taught him that. He was more a “thanks for the fun, see you never” type. A “hit and run” type. 

Arthur was starting to feel like he'd missed something. He carefully set down his pile of damp clothes. 

“Yeah,” Charles said easily, opening the door all the way, letting the full bathroom’s worth of steam come curling out around his shoulders, his hips, his ankles. He hadn’t bothered with a towel. 

Arthur’s mouth went dry. Charles’s cock was already plumping at Arthur’s scrutiny, a half-smile creasing Charles’s face. 

_He planned this,_ Arthur realized. He pressed a hand to his stomach almost involuntarily, unable to stop himself from remembering how big Charles had felt inside him, how full he’d been. Charles followed the motion and his grin widened. 

“Get back in the fuckin’ shower,” Arthur said gruffly, herding Charles, laughing, back into the bathroom. “Got somethin’ I wanna do first, then we can see ‘bout breakfast.”

\---

Breakfast out on the town was as near perfect as it could get, given that the town was really just Bacchus Station and breakfast was a slab of undercooked pancakes alongside a plate of overcooked bacon. 

Even the coffee was terrible, though Arthur would admit that maybe he just had higher standards for coffee now, given what he did for a living. Arthur managed to get through the first mug the waitress, a tired, careworn older woman with a too-small ring on her finger and a garish lovebite behind her right ear, had dumped in front of him without taking any cream, but Charles took one look at his own mug and emptied six packets of sugar into it. 

Arthur counted. 

“You must be a dentist’s worst nightmare,” Arthur remarked, still grimacing at the taste of his own coffee. It had been oddly viscous and left Arthur feeling vaguely violated. His teeth somehow tasted both very stale and very metallic at the same time. The waitress either didn’t notice or didn’t care--she saw that his mug was empty and swept past, pausing only to dump more lumpy, strangely thick brown coffee out of her carafe before disappearing into the kitchen. 

“I know,” Charles said, eyeing his mug. He pulled a face, thumped his chest like a man about to square up in the fighting ring, and knocked it all back in one go. 

“Jesus Christ, that’s terrible,” Charles coughed. 

Arthur just smiled at him, sentimental. “It’s pretty bad, yeah. Wanna swing by Lost Country before we head back to my place?” 

Charles shook his head. “I’ll live,” he promised. He took another look at the plate of bacon, each strip stiff and brittle. “Maybe.” 

Arthur chuckled. “This ain’t nothin’,” he said. “You oughta get Dutch to make you eggs an’ toast sometime. It’ll put hair on your chest, an’ not in a good way.” 

Dutch couldn’t cook for shit. That was why he always kept a woman around, that and his odd flights of romance. Now that he and Hosea weren’t sharing a tent or a cramped walk-up or even a cabin in the woods somewhere, Dutch needed someone else to cook for him or he’d starve to death. 

Charles tentatively took a bite out of one of the pancakes, which sagged and bowed in the middle, then winced. “If it’s worse than this, I think I’ll pass,” he said. 

“Prob’ly wise,” Arthur agreed sagely.

The waitress came out with their eggs and left them to it. The eggs were decent enough to salvage the rest of the meal and Arthur was feeling indulgent anyway. Charles kept making him laugh with stories about the strangest things he’d seen at truck stops and motels over the years--Bigfoot was a fairly normal feller, apparently, but the average Okie was terrifying--and after his second bracing cup of coffee Arthur’s mouth went numb, so he had a few more cups to wake up properly. 

By the time their waitress cleared their table and shooed them out the door, Arthur was fully awake, almost decently-fed, and mostly just interested in getting Charles back to the house so they could fuck in Arthur’s living room and then maybe go out and work the horses. 

“I think you’d like ridin’ Cloudrunner,” Arthur was saying, as they paid--Charles took the bill this time, since he’d somehow managed to nick Arthur’s wallet on the way into the diner and wouldn’t give it back to let Arthur cover the bill--and left, folding themselves back into Charles’s battered blue Bonneville. 

“Yeah? She’s a good looking horse. What’s her gait like?”

“Her trot’s like gettin’ kicked in the teeth,” Arthur admitted. “But she’s made for runnin’. You give her enough room, she runs like a dream.” 

“I kind of want to get your Arabians to like me,” Charles said. He backed out of the parking lot and angled himself north. Arthur’s place was just across the river from here, so Arthur could tolerate being folded into the car for the five or ten minutes it’d take them to get there. 

Why a feller as big as Charles wanted to drive a car like this Arthur didn’t know, but he hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask Charles to ride on the back of his bike in time so Arthur didn’t complain. 

Arthur snorted. “You’re more’n welcome to try,” he said. “Y’might get Roose to carry you for a bit. I’d stay away from Lyra.” 

“Aw, she can’t be all that bad,” Charles said, smiling at Arthur through the rear view mirror. 

“She’s worse,” said Arthur, amused. Granted, it’d be funny as hell to watch his two little Arabians chase Charles across the paddock, stamping and snorting like horny bulls. Arthur doubted that Lyra topped eight hundred pounds. But he was starting to realize that he liked Charles a whole awful lot, and siccing Lyra on a feller was pretty unkind. 

“I told you about Micah’s stitches, right?” 

Charles rolled his eyes. “I don’t know Micah very well,” he began, “but I know horses a little, and any idiot who needs seventeen stitches after coming across a horse was probably doing something to that horse that they shouldn’t have been.” 

“You know Micah fine, it seems,” said Arthur. He shook his head. “I ain’t see the whole thing--he came over one day when me an’ Javier were fixin’ part of the fence, to keep an eye on the horses an’ make sure we ain’t lose any out in the hills--but he must’a done somethin’ she didn't approve of. Lyra’s mean but she’ll warn a feller before she bites, usually.” 

“Where’d you find Micah, anyway?” Charles asked. “He seems… a little rough for customer service.” 

“You can say _stupid, loud an’ ugly,_ Charles,” Arthur laughed, reading between the lines. Micah was said to be something of an acquired taste, according to Dutch, and despite the fact that he’d known Micah for a bit now Arthur hadn’t ever actually managed to acquire a liking for the man. 

Micah was a wild one. Wilder than Arthur, even, and that was saying something. Micah was mean as a rattlesnake and twice as dumb. Rattlesnakes only bit when they needed to protect themselves. Micah would bite because he wanted a laugh, and because he wanted to watch someone twisting to death on the ground. 

“I’m being polite,” said Charles, the corner of his eyes turning up, “though do tell him if he says _how_ to me one more time, I’m gonna be a little less polite.” 

“I’d like to see Micah get hit, actually,” Arthur said. Though it probably wasn’t a good idea to let Charles wallop Arthur’s coworkers in public. Arthur’d probably have to jump Charles after, and Hosea would kill him if he got a public indecency citation while on Lost Country’s premises. 

“I’m not gonna hit your coworkers,” Charles said. “Seriously, though. Where’d he come from?” 

Arthur sobered up a little and shrugged with one shoulder. “I dunno, really,” he said. “Dutch picked Micah up when I weren’t lookin’. I cain’t remember where I was--out with Hosea, maybe--’bout two year back, right after--well.” Arthur stopped himself, not wanting to get into the whole situation with John fucking Marston and his truant habits. “‘Bout two years ago, anyway. Early summer.”

Charles raised an eyebrow. “So he’s new-new,” he said. 

Arthur nodded. “Yeah. Dunno where Dutch got him--somewhere out West, I think, I keep hearin’ the start of a story ‘bout a dive bar west’a Vegas an’ a poker game--but ol’ Dutch took a shine to him an’ brought him back.” 

“A dive bar west of Vegas? You’ve never heard the whole story?” 

“I try not to listen when Micah speaks,” Arthur explained. 

Charles barked a laugh. “That’s fair.” 

“He ain’t been… well, he ain’t been too terrible or nothin’,” Arthur allowed reluctantly. He didn’t like Micah but Micah worked, at least, and mostly stayed out of Arthur’s way. The women didn’t like him much but Micah hadn’t tried anything with them and if Bill and Pearson wanted to spend time with Micah outside of the shop, they were grown men. Micah knew not to come around Arthur’s place unless he’d been explicitly invited, and kept his shitty commentary to himself because he knew Arthur would hit him if given half a chance. 

“Just loud and rude?”

“An’ ugly,” Arthur added firmly. “Don’t forget that.” 

Charles laughed. 

He turned at the bend in the road and Arthur’s farm unfolded itself, the drive and the fence and house and the horses. 

_And,_ Arthur thought, leaning forward in his seat with a faint frown, _the women._

He counted three of them up by the fence tossing carrots to the horses. 

“Your friends?” Charles asked curiously, as he rattled down the drive, loose gravel pinging up against the underside of his car. “I know the blonde in the dress from the shop, right?” 

“Mary-Beth,” Arthur murmured, narrowing his eyes. The women turned around when they heard the car rattle up the drive. Mary-Beth blushed, but Tilly--the ringleader, if Arthur had to guess--only grinned. 

“They all your friends?”

“Unfortunately,” Arthur growled. “Mary-Beth’s the nice one, blonde, wearin’ a dress. Karen’s the other blonde in the cropped shirt. She's only nice when she wants somethin'. Middle one’s Tilly, who oughta know better.” 

Charles smiled. “Want me to run ‘em off for you?” 

“Oh no,” Arthur said, locking eyes with Tilly through the windshield. She looked mighty pleased with herself, smug as anything, like she'd somehow managed to pull one over on Arthur when all she'd really done was snuck up on him while his back was turned. “I got somethin’ better. Pull in up by the barn, then stay in the car, ‘less you wanna get run over.” 

Charles did as Arthur asked without asking any questions. (Arthur was beginning to realize that Charles was a very good sort to have around.) Tilly must’ve figured out what Arthur was planning, because she started forward with a “Arthur Van der Linde, don’t you _dare!_ ” rising to the morning air, but Arthur was faster. 

Arthur opened the barn door, put his fingers between his lips, and whistled, high and sharp.

Phillip, Arthur’s sex-crazed, territorial billy goat, came charging out of the barn at top speed, tossing his head and braying. Arthur locked him in at night to keep him from going through the fence in search of new additions to his harem--once Phillip had gotten loose and brought in a bighorn sheep, to both Arthur and the sheep’s consternation--and didn’t let him wander around the property unless Arthur was around to keep an eye on the old demon. 

Phillip saw the bright flash of Tilly’s pretty yellow blouse, swung around, and went on the charge. 

The women scattered, shrieking. They were too fast for Phillip to catch them and bowl them over, usually, but it was fun to watch them try and dodge the goat’s advances. Mary-Beth was quickest about it, popping under the fence and reaching the safety of the horses, who mostly adored her and would run Phillip off. Karen fled for the porch. 

Tilly held her ground for a minute, dodging left and right as Phillip chased after her, but eventually she too had to break and run and finally scrambled up to the safety of the roof of Charles’s Bonneville. 

Phillip made like he was going to charge the car, but thought better about it when Arthur got in the way. He knew that Arthur didn’t mind the taste of goat. Phillip snorted, his goaty eyes rolling, then he shook himself out and trotted off, calling for his many wives. 

“You jackass,” Tilly hissed, coming down off Charles’s car once she was sure the coast was clear. “That thing is gonna kill somebody some day!” 

“Prob’ly why you shouldn’t drop by unannounced an’ uninvited, then,” Arthur hissed back, then arranged his expression into as close to friendly and innocent as he could manage, because Charles climbed out of the driver’s seat and whistled to himself, either impressed or horrified, watching Phillip amble off. 

“Tilly,” Arthur said, sweet as could be, “Charles Smith. Charles, Miss Tilly.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Charles said, smiling. He looked so sincere about it that Tilly softened, though she shot Arthur a poisonous glare that promised later violence. 

“Nice to meet you too,” Tilly said, returning the smile. “Though I’ve seen you around. You’ve been comin’ by what, for almost a year now?”

“Pretty close,” said Charles. 

“Our Arthur treatin’ you right?” 

Arthur scowled at Tilly. He didn’t need her to go all territorial and defensive on him--Charles wasn’t Mary, who probably could’ve used a good chasing-off before things got real nasty. 

Tilly ignored him. 

“Mostly,” Charles said, a laughing look on his face that told Arthur he was joking. “He hasn’t made me a latte today, but other than that he’s been a perfect gentleman.” 

Tilly snorted. “There’s a good man in there somewhere,” she allowed. She winked at Arthur. “Deep down. Very, very deep down.” 

Before Arthur could open his mouth to ask Tilly what the hell she was doing on his property, scaring away his date, the other two women made their way over, Karen with one eye on the fields watching for Phillip and Mary-Beth followed by Hemingway and Reliance, who were nosing her pockets for treats. 

“Charles, this is Miss Mary-Beth and Miss Karen,” Arthur said. “You oughta know Mary-Beth--she does mornings--but Karen’s usually on nights with me.” 

“And missin’ you more every night, baby,” said Karen, winking at Arthur rougishly. “None of the other boys have quite your way with drunk cowhands. Last night was row-dee.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “I’ll hear all ‘bout it tomorrow,” he said. “An’ now that we all know each other, git gone.” 

“We just came by to check on the garden, is all,” Mary-Beth said, earnestly. 

Arthur believed her, but he tilted his head towards Tilly anyway. “Yeah? Who’s idea was it to be worried ‘bout the garden? It only went in last week, ain’t nothin’ growin’ yet.”

Tilly coughed loudly. “We’re just makin’ sure everything looks good, Arthur,” she said breezily. “And we were on our way out, weren’t we ladies?” 

Karen opened her mouth to protest--she liked to at least raid Arthur’s fridge for beer first--but Mary-Beth elbowed her none too gently, and Karen got the hint. 

Arthur narrowed his eyes. 

Charles chuckled in Arthur’s ear. Arthur startled a little--he’d been so focused on chasing off the women that he hadn’t noticed Charles come up beside him. Heat came off the other man’s body like a furnace. 

Tilly noticed the closeness between them, Charles brushing up against Arthur’s side, Arthur’s hand reaching for Charles’s hip almost unconsciously, and her grin widened. “We’ll see ya tomorrow, Arthur,” she said, shooing Karen and Mary-Beth off towards their own car. “Make sure you don’t work yourself too hard, now!”

“Yeah,” Karen chimed in, never one to miss an innuendo. “Don’t have too rough a ride now, y’here?”

Arthur put his fingers to his mouth and whistled again, scattered the women before Phillip could come charging from the field again. They ran, giggling and laughing, and tore out of the drive in high spirits. 

Arthur groaned. He's sure the entire crew would hear of Arthur's bedroom success by lunchtime. 

“Sorry ‘bout them,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Why they chose today of all days… meddlin’ women…” 

“I like them,” Charles said, voice rich with amusement. “They were just checking up on you, that’s all.” 

“What, like I’m a blushin’ virgin?” Arthur growled. “Jesus Christ.” 

Charles laughed low in Arthur’s ear. “Maybe not a virgin,” he allowed, which made Arthur snort, “but blushing? Maybe just a little.” 

“Shaddup,” Arthur grumbled, swatting Charles’s wandering hands away. “If you’re gonna jus’ make fun’a me, I ain’t havin’ it.”

“Fair,” Charles said, all serious despite his sparkling dark eyes. He titled his head towards the open barn door. “I can make it up to you, if you want.” 

Arthur considered this proposition. 

“Alright,” he said, very graciously. “But let me chase the cats out, first. I ain’t wanna traumatize ‘em.” 

\---

“Caramel Sauce Guy a good fuck, then?” John asked when Arthur came into work the next day, nearly an hour late for the start of his shift and unbothered it. 

Well, not entirely unbothered--as soon as John opened his stupid mouth, Arthur beaned him with the plastic travel mug he’d been carrying, which made a satisfying _thunk_ as it made its acquaintance with the side of John’s head. 

“Ow!” John said, immediately turning to Hosea, who’d come out of the kitchen upon hearing Arthur come in, for support. 

“No, you earned that one, John,” Hosea said. “I’da thrown somethin’ at you too if you’d ever said that about my Bessie.” 

John subsided, rubbing the side of his head and working himself up for a mighty sulk. 

Arthur cheerfully ignored him. Charles had kissed him goodbye this morning on Arthur's front porch, so Arthur was above and beyond being troubled by the many and varied sulks of John Marston. “Hosea,” Arthur said politely, hoping to maybe charm the man out of being too pissed that Arthur was late. “Good mornin’.” 

Hosea snorted, deeply unimpressed. “Don’t even start,” he grumbled. “Deliveries are in the back. You’re running late, so you can stay on ‘til three this afternoon.” 

“Works for me,” said Arthur, feeling amiable. He and Charles had fed the horses together this morning, then had gone back inside and fucked in Arthur’s tiny, cramped shower. They’d made plans to meet again when Charles got back from a long haul in a week’s time over breakfast. Arthur was going to have a good day, goddamnit, and he wasn’t about to let the likes of John Marston or even Hosea’s disappointment ruin it for him.

Hosea rolled his eyes. “C’mon, let’s git. You’re burnin’ daylight, son, and this round of deliveries has a few… special instructions, let’s say.” 

Arthur gave John the two-fingered salute and followed Hosea into the kitchen. 

“Morning, Arthur,” Mary-Beth chimed, up to her elbows in flour. 

“Yeah, good morning,” Tilly added, waggling her eyebrows at him over her mug, which was filled with some towering whipped cream monstrosity Arthur should probably get the recipe for. 

“Don’t you start,” he warned, still annoyed with her intrusion yesterday morning. “I ain’t wanna hear it.” 

“You gonna see this feller again? He's real handsome, Arthur,” Tily asked, brushing aside Arthur’s warning with a wave of her pretty little hand. 

“Ain’t your business,” Arthur said, scowling. 

Tilly grinned. She saw right through him, as per usual. “Good,” she said. “I like him. Not that he ever says much, but clearly he’s got _some_ good qualities if he’s got you reeled in, right?” 

Tilly had never met Mary, so Tilly somehow labored under the delusion that Arthur, being a quiet, occasionally artistic man, had good taste in bed partners. Arthur didn’t usually--Charles was the exception, not the rule. 

He didn’t say any of that, thought, because that would have given away more of himself than he was comfortable with, so Arthur only grunted and gave Tilly the same salute, though a bit more good-natured, that he’d given John. 

Tilly laughed into her mug. Mary-Beth swatted her with a towel. Hosea shook his head at all of them, like he couldn’t quite believe that this was life. 

“Deliveries are here,” Hosea said, waving a hand at a massive pile. Arthur whistled. 

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “We supplyin’ an army?” He took another good look. “An’ are those doughnuts jam-filled? Thought you said you weren’t ever gonna make those again, considerin’ the mess.” 

Hosea’s mouth twisted. “Something like that,” he said. “Dutch’s plans have borne fruit, it seems. He’s made some new friends in Emerald Ranch and Van Horn. And yes, the jam’s blueberry. There’s one on a plate for ya by the door, though it’s probably a bit stale now.” 

Arthur groaned. “Not more of his grand expansion plans again,” he grumbled. “It’s been a good six years! Slow an’ quiet, sure, but I thought that was what we’d been goin for. Why do we gotta pick things up?” 

Hosea shrugged with a shoulder. “I asked the same thing and was told to _have a little goddamn faith,_ ” he said, dry as the desert. Hosea shook his head. He looked tired and old, the lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth carved deeply. Arthur felt a pang in his chest. He didn’t know how many more good years Hosea still had in him. 

“It’ll be fine,” Hosea said. “You know how Dutch gets. He’s near as restless as you, and he ain’t have all your horses to keep him busy. Let him scratch the itch, yeah? Things’ll settle back down soon enough. You know how it is. 

Arthur grunted. He loved Dutch, he really did, but the man had always been--well, a bit flighty. He’d come up with grand ideas and fuss over them like they were his own duly begotten children for a month or two, then something new and shiny would catch his eye and he’d go haring off after that instead. 

Molly O’Shea was in for an unpleasant surprise one of these days. Dutch had taken up with her two years ago now and as far as Arthur knew he’d stayed faithful--which was something of a record for Dutch--but Molly, while nice, pretty and a decent cook, wasn’t near sharp enough to keep Dutch’s interest forever, and Dutch was a man who needed to stay interested. Boredom didn’t sit well with Dutch. 

_Every man’s got his flaws,_ Arthur told himself. He never felt right picking at Dutch’s faults. Even thinking about Dutch’s habits with women made guilt squirm in his chest. 

“Fine,” Arthur said. “I’m gonna need to borrow your truck, though, ‘f the van’s still broke.” 

“Yeah, it’s broke,” Hosea said, tossing Arthur his truck keys. “Why we don’t just strip that old piece of shit for parts I don’t know. Javier and Kieran ought to be out back. They’ll help you load up.”

“Kieran?” said Arthur doubtfully, though he did grab a few of the deliveries at the top of the stack and shove half the blueberry jam doughnut--a heavenly little creation of Hosea’s that Hosea hated making, due to the irritation of the blueberry jam refinement process or something--into his mouth. It was just as delicious as Arthur remembered, and he sighed around it happily. “That a good idea?” 

Hosea waved a careless hand. “He’s got to learn sometime,” he said. “The boy’s done nothing but skulk around the shop for the last six months. He can clean a restroom, I’ll give him that, but we do more than restock goddamn toilet paper.” 

Arthur wasn’t entirely sure that Kieran Duffy had the fortitude to do more than sweep up after close and refill the soap dispensers, but he wasn’t the boss. Arms full, he shrugged. “If you think he can handle it, I guess.” 

“He’ll be fine,” Hosea said. He opened the back door for Arthur and ushered him through. True to Hosea’s word, Javier and Kieran were leaning against Hosea’s truck, waiting for Arthur. Javier was calm and easy as usual, his shoulders relaxed, probably to coax Kieran into being a normal goddamn person for once and not a skittish, highstrung rabbit of a man. 

From what Arthur could see, it was sort of working. Kieran was the most nervous feller Arthur’d ever met, though he guessed half of that was because Kieran couldn’t be much older than nineteen or twenty. He’d come to Lost Country by way of a brawl Arthur and some of the other boys had gotten into with a bunch of two-bit biker thugs up in Colter. Kieran’d been caught up in all of it, working as some kind of hanger-on to the bikers, but he’d helped Arthur and his friends out of a tight spot even though it put a big old target on his back, so Arthur’d brought him back to Lost Country and loosed Hosea on him. 

In the months he’d been with them Kieran had calmed down a little bit, could manage to hold a conversation with just about everyone but Bill, who he was flat-out terrified of, and with Micah, who encouraged the terror, but Kieran was still tense and twitchy nearly all the time, which tended to get on Arthur’s nerves. 

_A man oughta stand his ground,_ he thought, watching as Kieran stiffened at the sight of Arthur, shoulders rising defensively. 

But, since Arthur was in such a good mood, he didn’t scowl or glare at Kieran. He kept his face neutral, cocking an eyebrow at the boy, and jerked his chin in greeting to Javier. 

“You’re gonna be running deliveries ‘til dark, brother,” Javier said sympathetically. 

“I know,” Arthur grumbled. “‘S what I get for comin’ in late, I guess.” 

“You gonna kiss and tell?” Javier asked. He was at least politer about it than John had been. Javier and John had had similar childhoods, but Javier had at least learned some manners. There was no smugness on his face, only curiosity. 

“No,” Arthur said, shortly. 

Javier smiled and straightened up, patting the side of Hosea’s truck. “That’s what I thought. Glad you had a good few nights. ‘S good to loosen up every once and a while.” 

He said it to make Arthur blush, and he succeeded. Arthur went red behind his ears, down his neck. He scowled. 

Javier only laughed. “Man, it’s too easy with you,” he said. “Watch out for Sean for the next few days, yeah? He’s got it in his head that he can embarrass you into being nice to him.”

“He’s due for a broken nose if he does.” Arthur dumped his first load in the truck bed and scowled at it. Javier patted his shoulder. 

“I’ll make sure he knows the risks going in. That doesn’t usually stop him, though.” 

“No,” Arthur agreed, “it sure don’t.” 

Between him, Javier and a quiet, wide-eyed Kieran, they had Hosea’s truck packed full within ten minutes, a tarp slid over it all and ratcheted down to keep from scattering doughnuts, beer cans and worse all over the highway. 

“Good luck, brother,” Javier said, as Arthur fished the deliveries list out from under the tarp and climbed into Hosea’s truck. “I’ll save some tips for you!” 

Arthur cocked two fingers out in the dumb cowboy gun salute he’d picked up from Dutch and Hosea back in the late seventies. Javier tipped his hat, a joke between them. Kieran waved hesitantly. 

_He did well,_ Arthur thought, as he swung back out on the road and left Lost Country in the dust behind him, Javier and Kieran getting smaller and smaller. Granted, it wasn’t like stacking deliveries in the back of a truck was that hard, but still. They’d all started somewhere, even Arthur. 

He rolled all the windows down to let the wind rush in and eased the gas up. It wasn’t like riding his bike, not even close, but it was tolerable enough. 

His deliveries went well. Most folks knew to expect him and were outside as soon as they heard his truck rumbled up, hands out and wallets extended. Arthur didn’t have a single person give him any shit about a mixed-up order or a smashed box of bagels. 

It was nice. Suspicious, but nice.

He ran deliveries until well after three, but he didn’t mind all that much. The tips were good and the road nice and easy. The sticky, pervasive heat of high summer was back, so he was grateful for the wind. 

By the time he made it back to Lost Country, the place had turned over from coffee shop to bar and the parking lot was starting to fill up. Arthur parked around back, cut the engine and hopped out for a quick smoke. 

_Not a bad day,_ he thought. He had fifty bucks in his pocket, a cigarette in his hand, and Charles had kissed him goodbye that morning, sweet as summer rain. 

_Not a bad day at all._

That was how Dutch found him, propped up against the back wall of Lost Country, nearly boneless with contentment. 

Dutch stepped out of the back and chuckled. “Good day, my boy?” he asked. He fished a cigar out of his back pocket and lit up, exhaling a cloud of thick smoke that reminded Arthur of half a hundred nights spent under the open sky, nothing but a campfire and Dutch’s solid presence keeping Arthur safe from the dark. 

Arthur didn’t reply, just made a wordless, rumbling sigh and took another drag off his cigarette. 

Dutch _mmm_ ed back, and they spent a few minutes like that, shoulder to shoulder in companionable silence, smoking, saying nothing. 

It was Dutch who finally broke the serene quiet. “This new friend of yours,” he started, and Arthur groaned and peeled himself up off the wall. 

“Not you too,” he said warningly, waving his cigarette at Dutch. “I can take it from Tilly and Javier and John goddamn Marston, but I ain’t wanna hear it from you.” 

“Relax, son, relax,” Dutch laughed, the corners of his eyes wrinkling with amusement and affection. “I’m not gonna poke at you, Arthur. You know me better than that. When have I ever cared who you’ve shared a bed with?

 _That’s true._ Arthur hadn’t ever been a randy teenager, not by a long shot, not like John had been. John had swaggered around between the ages of sixteen and twenty like an unfixed cat. Arthur’d been--well, he’d been much the same as a young man as he was now. Every now and again somebody had caught his eye, but he’d only had a handful of lovers across his entire life. Dutch had caught him making out with a few girls over the years, and had slammed into Albert’s shitty apartment eight, nine years back and caught Albert and Arthur in the middle of, well. Dutch’d seen more than he’d meant to see, that was for sure. 

But despite all that Dutch had never really given a shit about who Arthur’d been sweet on. Except for Mary. He’d hated Mary, and Arthur reminded him of as much, taking another drag. 

Dutch snorted. “She was somethin’ else,” Dutch said darkly. “She had you all twisted up around yourself with her back and forth. A pretty girl, I’ll give you that, but a goddamn snake in the grass. It’s one thing to decide you don’t wanna be with somebody any more, but she--”

“She weren’t the only one to blame,” Arthur interrupted, before Dutch could really get himself worked up about it. “I didn’t know what I wanted neither, not back then," Arthur continued. "Me an' Mary were--well. We just weren’t right for each other, but we were also stubborn as hell. It took us awhile to realize that we weren’t ever gonna make it work.”

“You give her more credit than she deserves,” Dutch grumbled, but he let it lie. Arthur had wanted to marry Mary, once upon a time, and when she’d finally called it off for good he’d been miserable and mean for months. Dutch--all of them who’d been around at the time, really, Dutch and Hosea, Mrs. Grimshaw and even John--had taken Mary’s last rejection _extremely_ to heart, Dutch more so than any of the others. Absent-minded, ambitious and flighty Dutch might be, but he loved his sons, and Arthur had been his first.

 _Sometimes it pays to grow up like I did,_ Arthur thought, far enough out from that particular old hurt to be mostly fond. _But havin’ your whole pack of misfits involved in your sex life ain’t one of those times._

Arthur knocked his shoulder against Dutch’s. “Charles ain’t like Mary,” he said. “Least I don’t think he is. We’re still kinda gettin’ to know each other, a bit. But he’s a good feller. He--likes horses. He’s funny. He works hard.” 

Dutch snorted again. “Mary Gilles never worked hard a day in her life,” he said, but he was mollified by Arthur’s description of Charles. Dutch valued hard work over most anything, hard work and loyalty. “But I didn’t come out here to give you shit about finally gettin’ yourself laid, son.”

Arthur coughed on the last of his cigarette, his ears burning. “What did you come out here for, then?” 

“This feller,” Dutch said, carefully. His dark eyes were more curious than anything, but Arthur could see fire in them too, Dutch’s desire to shield Arthur--to shield all of them, but to shield Arthur in particular--burning there. “Is he… Did he treat you right? I know you’re not… terribly interested in rollin’ around in the sheets.” 

Arthur resisted the urge to try and melt into the bricks behind him. He couldn’t meet Dutch’s eye. He’d never been able to talk about this, not really, had only ever managed to talk about it in the vaguest of terms. “Yeah, Dutch, he was… he was sweet.” Well, sweet until Arthur had asked him not to be, but that was _not_ something Arthur was going to talk about with Dutch, not ever. 

“You talked with him?” Dutch pressed. 

Arthur groaned. “Yeah, I talked with him. About--about me. I’m bein’ serious, Dutch, it’s fine. We were all, uh. Consentin’. An’ I like rollin’ ‘round just fine. ‘M just particular about the person I do it with, is all.” 

Dutch eyed him hard, then nodded, satisfied. “Well, good,” he said. “As long as you’re happy. You wear a condom?”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Did he?” Dutch was laughing now, slapping Arthur on the shoulder. “I just want you to be safe, son.”

“I’m gonna kill you,” Arthur growled. He’d never be able to step inside the Seven-Eleven in Valentine _again,_ not without Dutch’s voice ringing in his ears. 

“Nah, you’d miss me too much,” said Dutch cheerfully. He scruffed the back of Arthur’s neck and shook him fondly, then let him go. “Bring him ‘round the bar sometime, yeah? I wanna meet this feller.”

“Sure,” Arthur lied, determined to avoid doing just that for as long as possible. 

Dutch must have seen it because he chuckled and shoved Arthur in the direction of his bike. “Head home, son,” he advised. “Take the evening off, yeah? Won’t do to ride you too hard into the ground just yet.”

“I hate you,” Arthur told him. He didn’t, of course, but sometimes Dutch made it difficult to remember that Arthur loved him. “You an’ the rest. Next person to say shit to me’s gettin’ fuckin’ decked. I mean it, Dutch!” 

Dutch waved him off, still chuckling to himself. 

Arthur kicked at the pavement a bit, scowling and rubbing the back of his neck, but he couldn’t be mad for too long. Arthur was usually Dutch’s most responsible son, and very rarely gave the old man something to tease him about. And it had been a minute since he’d heard Dutch laugh like that. 

_Asshole,_ Arthur thought, but the heat behind it was already fading. 

He did as Dutch said and took himself home, the sky just beginning to shade towards evening when he finally made it to his front porch. The horses were all out grazing, the dogs napping in the shade of the barn. 

Arthur’s room still smelled like Charles. 

_Christ,_ he thought, swapping his clothes out for a ragged pair of jeans he only wore when mucking out the fields and a holey tee-shirt. The sheets were still rumpled and were in bad need of a wash, but Arthur couldn’t bring himself to take care of it just yet. 

_Christ,_ he thought, and not for the first time _. I got it bad._

\---

A week went by quick enough. Arthur found himself so busy at work he almost didn’t have time to miss Charles. Dutch, emboldened by swelling sales in Strawberry and Van Horn, seemed keen to have Arthur haring off across the tristate area, going farther and farther each time he went out in Hosea’s battered old truck. 

Hosea wasn’t happy about it. Arthur tried to mind his own business, keeping his head down, but in the end it didn’t matter anyway. He came in to work on a Tuesday morning, a few days after Charles had left for Cholla Springs, and saw a massive stack of deliveries that he was apparently supposed to cart to Rhodes, a dusty little town down in the heart in Lemoyne. Hosea saw where Arthur was headed and pitched an unholy fit. 

“He’s really done it this time,” Hosea snarled, shaking a finger in the direction of Dutch’s office. Dutch wasn’t in yet, not this early in the day, but Arthur winced anyway. 

He hated it when Dutch and Hosea fought, really fought. They bickered like old women and always had, but they were more than capable of a knock-down, drag-out fight and Arthur hated it when they got like that. 

“Aw, c’mon, Hosea, it’ll be fine,” Arthur said soothingly, even though he wasn’t too keen on the idea of rolling through Lemoyne either. 

Lemoyne had, historically, been off-limits to Dutch’s people. Arthur had vague memories of going down there a time or two as a younger man, the most recent being only a few months after Isaac’s death, and every time he’d been there he’d gotten into a fight with somebody. Dutch had too, and John. Even Hosea was wary of showing his face in Rhodes, due to some scheme he and Arthur had run there years back involving a whole bunch of backwoods moonshine and the town bar. 

The problem with Lemoyne was that Dutch’s folk weren’t ever the only band of enterprising nomads in those parts. Lemoyne had the dubious honor of being home to more than a few packs of wild reprobates. Arthur’d never been stupid enough to tangle with the Nite Folk of the bayou, he’d heard what they did to folk stupid enough to cross them, but he’d had his share of run-ins with the Lemoyne Raiders. 

“You worry too much,” Arthur said. “It’s been, what, near ten years since we been down that way? I ain’t heard much of the Raiders on tee-vee. They were a wild bunch, true, but it’s nineteen ninety-six, Hosea. The outlaw way of life’s long dead.” 

Hosea snorted. “Just ‘cause they’ve been quiet doesn’t mean that they’re gone,” he said. “And they’ve got a long memory, Arthur.” 

“Yeah, they still think it’s eighteen sixty,” Arthur muttered, rolling his eyes. The Raiders hadn’t liked Arthur because he’d been loud and angry on their turf. For a few others among Dutch’s people, namely Javier, Lenny and Tilly, the Raiders didn’t like them because of they dared to exist without apologizing for it.

“If it comes to it, Hosea, I ain’t mind punchin’ a racist,” Arthur said. 

Hosea shot him a dark look. “Punchin’s not what I’m worried about,” he said. “Last I heard, the Raiders had gotten so damn quiet because they bought themselves a few lawmen. Sheriff in Rhodes, Police Chief in Saint Denis, a few staties. They’ve got some pull, Arthur.” 

“An’ I’m just deliverin’ some doughnuts,” Arthur said. He sighed. “Listen, you an’ I both know that we ain’t gotta like it. This is just one’a Dutch’s things, right? Inconvenient, but he’ll forget about it all sooner or later.” 

“I don’t know, Arthur.” Hosea looked at him and Arthur almost flinched. He’d almost never seen Hosea look so old. Frail, almost, like his cheekbones would cut through the skin of his face, like he was brittle and dried up and ready to keel over in a strong wind. 

_Hosea ain’t supposed to look like that._

Arthur loved Dutch like a father. Hell, he loved Dutch _more_ than he’d ever loved his own father. Dutch had saved him. Dutch had seen value in him all those years ago when Arthur had been just some kid everyone else had run out or thrown away. Dutch had taken Arthur in, had given Arthur his name. 

But Dutch was only ten years older than Arthur, had still been barely more than a boy himself when Arthur’d fallen into his lap. He was Arthur’s brother as much as his father, a comrade and co-conspirator. 

Hosea was Arthur’s _parent._

 _I loved my mama,_ Arthur thought, _but old Hosea sure gives her a run for her money._

“It’s gonna be alright, old man,” said Arthur gruffly, taking his list of deliveries back. “I’m careful, you know I am. Ain’t gonna be a problem. I’m goin’ in broad daylight. Not even the Raiders, if they’re still around, wanna mess with me in daylight.” 

Hosea’s lips thinned. “Alright, fine,” he said. “You wanna get your dumb ass shot, be my guest. I ain’t gonna stitch you up this time.” 

“Missus Grimshaw’s got steadier hands’n you anyway,” Arthur teased, determined to set the old man’s heart to rest. “I’ll be fine. I’ll go to Rhodes first, get it out of the way. An’ _you_ work on distractin’ Dutch, alright? Maybe throw an expansion _here_ at him. Like a, I dunno, like a fuckin’ all-day omlette bar or somethin’.”

“Omlette bar?” Hosea hissed, staring at Arthur like he’d grown a second head. “What the fuck do you think this is, a Holiday Inn?”

Arthur left loaded up with new deliveries and with Hosea’s abuses ringing in his ears, smiling to himself. He’d managed to distract Hosea, anyway, and with any luck Hosea’d be too busy wondering how he’d manage to raise such a dumb lunk to worry about Arthur running afoul of the illustrious Lemoyne Raiders. 

Arthur kept his word, though, swinging south first before hitting up Emerald Ranch and Van Horn with their orders. He’d meant what he’d said. Nobody, not even most beer-soaked, backwoods, redneck Lemoyne Raider, was dumb enough to waylay Arthur in broad daylight. 

_Ain’t hurt that I’m in the truck, though._ The Lemoyne Raiders had only known Arthur on the back of his bike. He’d been adverse to cars even then. Here, now, ten years older and safely ensconced in Hosea’s battered Chevy, Arthur was practically a brand new man. 

He took the highways anyway, just to be safe, and coasted south and east across the plains to the rolling hills that surrounded Rhodes. The dirt was truly red here, genuine Southern dirt that gusted across the roadways in summer and turned to thick, sticking clay in spring. The hills were emerald green, flush and pretty, and the woods thick and dark where they swelled up from creek mouths and hollers. 

Rhodes had weathered the passage of time a bit better than Valentine, though it still had that faded, faintly grimy feel that pervaded much of the lower forty-eight. There was a statue honoring some racist Confederate shithead at the mouth of the town square, a bright yellow post office, a few rows of shops and storefronts. Some asshole had draped a faded, wind-tattered Confederate flag from the second floor of one of the storefronts. 

_But that’s the worst of it,_ Arthur thought, keen eyes sweeping the street for any sign of the Raiders. Back in the day the Raiders had half-run Rhodes. They’d parked their bikes along the streets in broad daylight, their rims sometimes still splattered with blood. Their clubhouse had been right off the main drag. 

There weren’t any bikes about that Arthur could see, and the folks who were out were just ordinary folks, shopping or lounging in the sun. The old clubhouse, the scene of many fights, was a gun store now. 

_Hosea’s just gettin’ paranoid in his old age._

Arthur pulled in in front of the down’s bar, the Rhodes Saloon, complete with swinging doors and a faded sign, Spanish moss hung from every tree branch, and sighed. 

_Better me than one of the others,_ he thought, eyeing the bar. Arthur at least could pass for a local, or a near-local. He didn’t have quite the same slow, sleepy, mouth-full-of-taffy Southern drawl that the Rhodes locals had, but he’d done a fair bit of growing up in Texas and Arizona and had enough of an accent to pass as a good old boy. 

_And I’m tall._ It helped, being tall. Arthur’d long since lost the muscle definition of his prime fighting days, but he was still a big man and moved like he knew how to throw a punch. Most folks gave that a healthy respect and let Arthur be. 

Arthur rooted through the truckbed for the Rhodes deliveries--mostly beer, to liven up the tap selection at the bar, along with some doughnuts and other odds and ends--and began to stack everything by the saloon’s back door. The barman came out and kicked up a fuss about bringing everything inside, which Arthur did, and then paid Arthur and sent him on his way. 

“We’ll see ya again, I’m sure,” the barman said distractedly. “Have a blessed day, mister.” 

Arthur snorted, counting his tip--fifteen bucks, which wasn't bad--and left without returning the blessing. 

_See, old man?_ He thought in Hosea's direction. _Told you it wouldn’t be that bad._

He kept an eye out, both on his way out of town and up the road aimed for New Hanover, but Arthur didn’t see so much as a rusty tailpipe. There were no Lemoyne Raiders down here, not anymore. 

Arthur let himself relax as he left the red dirt and green hills of Lemoyne behind him, the landscape shifting back to the woods and hills of eastern New Hanover. 

_All the old troublemakers is gone now,_ he thought. He hadn’t seen any Murfrees in the weeks he’d been running deliveries either. New Hanover in the early- and mid-eighties had been a wild place. Ambarino and West Elizabeth had been even wilder. 

But those times had all passed away, it seemed, all of the hippies and the anarchists Arthur’d grown up around mellowing out into mostly-respectable businessmen. The ones that hadn’t been able to settle down had all died or ended up in jail. 

Dutch had had this one friend, or acquaintance, or whatever he’d been, who’d finally worked up the nerve to stop talking about teaching the government a lesson and had graduated to blowing up banks. He’d landed himself a twenty-year prison sentence for blowing up an armored car near the state line in Ambarino. 

Arthur was glad Dutch had moved them all out of that kind of crowd. RICO charges were no joke. 

_I wonder how the federal pen is treatin’ Colm O’Driscoll,_ Arthur thought, wrinkling his nose in distaste. He’d never liked Colm, thought Dutch had tolerated the man in small doses. Arthur’d seen Colm kick a stray dog once, just to be an asshole, and he made a habit of disliking assholes who hurt animals for fun. _Hopefully not too well._ Colm must've gone inside eighteen, nineteen years ago. If there was any kind of balancing force in the universe, Colm should've caught a shiv in the back years ago. Arthur'd have to check, when he found the time. 

He rounded the bend into Van Horn and put all thoughts of the Lemoyne Raiders and Colm O’Driscoll and the bad old days riding around the country out of his mind. Dutch had never gotten caught up in bank bombings and armored car robberies, despite some of his more radical ideas, so Arthur didn’t really have to worry about what life was like inside a federal prison. If Colm had been able to drag Dutch down with him he would have, but Dutch wasn’t stupid enough to get caught up in Colm’s wilder ideas. 

The owner of Old Light was waiting for his usual, as was the greasy feller who minded Van Horn’s and the odd Scotsman who ran a dngy pawn shop at the end of the pier. From Van Horn Arthur went down to Emerald Ranch, grateful that Dutch’s grand plans had not yet extended to running shit up to the far end of Annesburg, and from Emerald Ranch he headed home. 

“There weren’t any trouble,” Athur assured Hosea as soon as he stepped out of the truck and tossed the old man his keys. “‘S quiet as a mouse out there.” 

Hosea, who’d been waiting for Arthur by the back door, sighed and shook his head. “This time,” he muttered. 

Arthur frowned. “Is there somethin’ I’m missin’ here?” he asked. “It really weren’t a big deal, Hosea. What’s goin’ on?” 

Hosea shook his head again. “I’m just--well. I’m not sure we need to be spendin’ our time runnin’ deliveries so far outside our normal circle, is all. We’ve got a good thing going here. There’s no need to get greedy.” 

“Has Dutch told you why he’s lookin’ to--how’d you say it, _franchise?_ ” 

Dutch told Hosea almost everything. They’d always been as thick as thieves, and while Dutch was good at ideas it was Hosea who was good at making an idea _work_ , at poking and prodding and fiddling with something until it got up and running.

“Not really,” said Hosea, sourly. “He’s--well. He’s worried about the money, that’s all. We’re not making anything less than we usually do, but with the new mouths we’ve got to feed, Dutch is feeling a little… strained.” 

“Aw, we’ll make it out alright,” Arthur said. “We always do, even if we’ve gotta pinch pennies for a few months. Who’s havin’ a hard time? I can put somebody up, ‘less it’s Sean.” 

Hosea rolled his eyes. “I don’t think things are quite that bad,” he said. “It’s just restlessness, that’s all. You’re not the only one who strains at being stuck here, you know.” 

Arthur grunted. That was true enough. “Think I should take old Dutch out ridin’ or somethin’? Get him away from his woman for a while?” 

“That’s… not a bad idea,” Hosea said. “Make a weekend of it. Go out to New Austin or something--he loves the West as much as you do.”

“I got plans this weekend,” said Arthur, trying to arrange the months of the year in his head, “but I can take him out the weekend after. Should be fun.” 

“Have plans this weekend, do you?” Hosea asked, quirking up an eyebrow into an expression that had Arthur burying his own face in his hands, muffling a groan. 

“Not you too, Hosea, please,” Arthur grumbled. “I’ve heard it from damn near everybody. Even Dutch.”

“Yeah, he told me,” said Hosea. He clapped Arthur on the shoulder. “I’m not gonna talk feelings with you, son, I’m too goddamn old for that shit. I’m just happy for you, is all. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” 

“Not talkin’ about it,” Arthur growled. 

Hosea laughed. “Bring him around some time. I wanna meet him properly,” Hosea said. 

“He’s met you already.” Arthur scrubbed his hands down his face and looked up. Hosea was watching him with amusement creasing the lines of his face. “You make him call you _Mister Matthews?_ ” 

“I don’t make anybody call me anything,” said Hosea mildly. “He’s just a very polite young man, is all. What he’s doin’ with _you_ I’ll never know.” 

“I’m polite!” Arthur protested. 

Hosea shot him a withering look. “When there’s a gun to your head, maybe. Now c’mon, git inside. We’ll divy up tips and you can go on your way.” 

Grumbling under his breath, Arthur did what he was told. He threw his delivery tips into the pot, since even though he’d done all the driving and lifting and carrying, Mary-Beth had done the baking and Javier the brewing and Kieran the packaging. 

He left with twenty-two bucks in his pocket and another blueberry jam doughnut, humming to himself as he went. He left a note on Dutch’s office door telling Dutch to pick a date to go out riding, slung himself across his bike, and made for home. 

Back at the house Arthur busied himself in his chores. The garden was coming in nicely, fresh green shoots unfolding from black dirt, and one of the barn cats had decided to have her kittens underneath Arthur’s front porch, so there were now little baby kittens, smaller than Arthur’s hand and just barely able to open their eyes, toddling around his favorite chair. 

A feller from the high country upstate had come by yesterday to inspect Arthur’s horses. He’d made some noise about being interested in borrowing Reliance, so the farrier was due out tomorrow to check and make sure she was sound for ranch work. 

Arthur took a moment to stop at his front door and look over it all, hands on his hips. The life he’d built for himself was laid out before him pretty as a picture, still strange after all these years. 

_Huh,_ he thought, watching the horses graze. _Who woulda thought?_ He gave himself another minute or two to watch it all, horses and chickens and cats and dogs, the only thing missing a person to watch it all with, then he turned around and went inside. 

\---

“You’re here early,” Arthur said, when the week drew to a close and that battered Pontiac Bonneville came rattling up the drive. 

Charles threw his car into park and climbed out, stretching, and smiled. “Finished up down in Cholla Springs half a day early,” he said. “Drove like hell coming in.” 

“You miss me that much, then?” Arthur drawled, mostly teasing. 

Charles laughed. “Your horses, definitely. You, maybe a little.”

Arthur snorted. “C’mon in,” he invited, stepping back to let Charles grab his frayed duffle bag out of the Bonneville’s passenger seat and head inside, out of the heat. 

Arthur followed after him, leaving the screen door open to catch a bit of breeze. He’d kept the house mostly tidy throughout the week, knowing that Charles was coming back, and had even managed to run to the store and pick up real, genuine food. 

Well, a few extra cans of beans, a big old pack of Ro-Tel, some ground chuck, and an onion. Arthur wasn’t too comfortable in the kitchen but he could at least make a pretty decent chili, and if he used a campfire instead of a stove he could whip up any combination of eggs, meat and vegetables into a good old-fashioned hobo’s pie. 

_Not that I’m tryin’ to prove anythin’, or anythin’,_ Arthur thought wryly, giving Charles space to explore Arthur’s house and get comfortable at his own pace. He and Charles had managed just fine last weekend, between trips to the diner down in Bacchus Station and take-out picked up in Emerald Ranch. 

But, Arthur reasoned, if they didn’t have to drive twenty minutes down the road to get their food and then twenty minutes back to eat it, that was forty whole minutes two or three times a day that they could spend doing other things. 

Charles set his dufflebag down in the living room, monopolizing Arthur’s favorite armchair, and put his hands on his hips. He looked tired, in the thin light of Arthur’s living room. A week out at work and then a mad rush to get back here had taken their toll on him. 

_Nothin’ too strenuous for a bit, then,_ Arthur decided. He took a tentative step forward, interested in seeing if Charles would let him in his space. Charles did easily, hand out to catch Arthur by the hip, and before Arthur could say anything Charles drew him close for a long, lingering kiss. 

Any plans Arthur’d had for the day fell right out of his head. 

“Uh,” he said intelligently, when Charles pulled back a bit to let them both breathe. Charles smiled against the corner of Arthur’s mouth. 

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding particularly sorry at all. “Just been wanting to do that for a couple of days, is all.” 

Arthur huffed at him, which made Charles laugh and kiss him again. He nipped Arthur’s bottom lip, a favorite move of Charles’s, and when Arthur gasped against his lips he kissed Arthur deeper, tongue running along Arthur’s teeth, hand on Arthur’s hip curling, turning hot. 

“So what did you want to do today?” Charles asked, once he’d quite thoroughly shut down any other thoughts that Arthur’d managed to half put together. 

Arthur growled at him, low, and rocked his hips against Charles experimentally, testing the waters. Charles’s dick was just as hard as Arthur’s and pleasure shivered up his spine when they brushed, the pressure firm and good and almost frictionless, despite the fact that they were both still wearing jeans. 

“Yeah?” Charles asked, his eyes laughing. “Missed me, huh?”

“You started it,” Arthur retorted. Charles opened his mouth to reply with something witty and clever, probably, but Charles wasn’t the only one who could distract a man. Arthur took advantage of the break between kisses to lean in and get his mouth on Charles’s neck, sucking a warm, wet bruise there that had Charles grabbing the back of Arthur’s shirt with his free hand, fisting the fabric tightly, tilting his head back with a heavy groan to give Arthur better access. 

“I was gonna ask if you wanted to go riding again,” Charles panted, his voice heavy and low with arousal. “But now I have a couple of other ideas, if you don’t mind, and the horses don’t mind me stealing you from them for a little while. 

Arthur took his mouth off Charles’s neck to brush his nose against the other man’s jawline, seeking the warmth burning just below his ear. Charles’s stubble rubbed against Arthur’s own, scattering sparks down Arthur’s nerves. 

“I’m all yours,” Arthur said, and meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: 
> 
> Goats. Mentions of infidelity (Dutch - would argue that this is canon). Mentions of less-than-healthy relationships (Arthur/Mary). Arthur struggles with some self-esteem issues more explicitly in this chapter than in the others. Mentions of canon-compliant racism (the Raiders, Micah). 
> 
> The plot thickens! I have many many thoughts and many really specific, targeted headcanons, so a lot of the interpretations of characters and relationships presented here aren't necessarily canon, though I have tried to match as close as I could while also being an insane person with really hyperspecific ideas about what happens when you're adopted by a guy ten years older than you and that guy happens to be a pathological liar and an idealist at the same time. 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for your kudos, comments and bookmarks!! The response to this story has been really humbling and I love hearing from all of you!


	5. lost country: v

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the one-day delay! I just got back from Lake Michigan and honestly it's a miracle that I didn't a) drown, due to irresponsible amounts of alcohol consumption or b) sunburn away into nothingness. 
> 
> The tops of my titties are so, so burnt. 
> 
> Happy surprise Monday update instead!

Arthur and Charles didn’t manage to make it out riding that first day after Charles came back from his long haul down in Cholla Springs. Arthur hadn’t known just how many ways there were to get distracted just trying to move around his own damn house, but every time they had made a move to get up, pull their clothes on and get outside, one of them always managed to distract the other and they’d end up right back where they’d started. 

_Well,_ Arthur thought the next morning, sore all over and satisfied with it, _we didn’t manage to make it out riding_ horses _, anyway._

There had been some other riding, once he and Charles had managed to stop fucking lazily on Arthur’s living room floor and had made it to the bedroom. Arthur had always tried to be a solicitous host and by that point Charles had been exhausted and flushed with his best efforts in the living room, so Arthur had generously allowed Charles to lay back on Arthur’s creaky old bed and had shown Charles the meaning of hard work. 

The goddamn barn cats had managed to draw Arthur out of Charles’s arms at last as the sun broke through the windows the next morning. The cats had all posted up beneath Arthur’s bedroom window and had started howling for their breakfast. Copper and Cain, never ones to miss out on the opportunity to make some noise, joined in with their big voices and then the chickens decided that they felt left out and started making a racket of their own, and Arthur knew he wasn’t going to get any more peace and quiet until he made sure everybody was fed. 

Arthur pulled himself out of Charles’s arms, smiling a little to himself when Charles, who could sleep like a dead man, as Arthur had learned over the last few days, groaned and rolled over. The bedsheets had twisted up around Charles’s hips and left the rest of him bare, the planes of his shoulders, the expanse of his ribs, the small of his back. 

_I can ignore the cats for another minute or two,_ Arthur thought, watching Charles breathe deeply and settle back into sleep, snores muffled against Arthur’s pillow. _I can just look for a few seconds._

Charles didn’t have half as much ink as Arthur. On his right shoulder Charles had his mother’s name tattooed in simple script. On his left shoulder he had a wheel, a thinly-inked circle drawn with four arrows inside it, the points coming together in the middle, not quite touching. Charles's right arm had sun, a bolt of lightning and a star going around each other in a circle just above Charles’s elbow, and on his right knee was another wheel, this one a more intricate affair of dots and stars arranged in a faded pattern, marred here and there by the scars left by a lifetime of skinned knees. 

Arthur, in contrast, didn't have hardly any ink on his arms or his legs where others could see it; most of his tats were confined to his torso, his chest and his back and the sides of his ribs. Arthur had always been oddly private about his tattoos. Charles didn't seem to have the same problem. 

Arthur and Charles had spent a fair bit of time examining each other’s ink last night, though they’d gotten interrupted a fair few times. Charles’s knees were ticklish and Arthur had exploited said weakness mercilessly. Charles had made him pay for it, of course--Arthur had one particular tat, a half-sketch of a deer he'd done a few years ago and had liked enough to get inked, riding his left hip that was sensitive as all hell, and Charles had figured out that if he ran his tongue along it just right, Arthur bucked his hips like a show pony. 

Arthur took one last look, memorizing Charles’s body to draw him later, when Charles went back to work and Arthur got bored and lonely, then closed the bedroom door behind him and went about his morning. 

He’d bought some coffee grounds at the H-E-B in Emerald Ranch in an attempt to be a better host, so he fished the tin out of his pantry, measured out the grounds, filled the machine with water, and got it all to boiling and brewing. He grabbed himself a slice of bread and shoved it into the toaster, rummaging around for butter and jam, then ate his toast on the way out the door as he shrugged a threadbare flannel shirt on, buttons undone, and made his way outside. 

Copper and Cain flung themselves at Arthur like they’d thought he’d died.

“Alright, alright,” Arthur grumbled, extracting himself from his excited, frantic dogs. “Down, boys, ‘s all right, I ain’t dead. G’wan, git, gimme some room.” 

They’d probably heard all the yelling going on in Arthur’s bedroom last night and had gotten themselves quite worked up about it. Arthur scratched Copper’s ears, mostly impressed that the old hound could still raise a racket like a puppy, and shooed the dogs off in the direction of the barn. 

Arthur’s menagerie followed him across the yard, cursing at him in their multitude of languages, hound and cat and chicken and even horse, once the horses caught sight of Arthur heading towards the barn and started up their own demands for their breakfast. 

Arthur sighed. 

By the time he’d fed everyone and had made it out into the paddock with a brush and some lead rope, intent on working both the dirt and the energy out of his herd, Charles had joined him outside and was leaning on the paddock fence, munching on toast of his own with two tin mugs perched carefully on top of the post. 

Arthur smiled and made his way over, followed closely by Magnolia, who remembered Charles, Hemingway, Blue, Reliance and Kestrel. Hemingway and Reliance were friendly horses, always keen to meet Arthur’s guests. Blue and Kestrel were usually more reserved, but they’d picked up on the other horses’ excitement and were likely hoping to snag a treat or two for themselves. 

_Faithless animals,_ thought Arthur, amused. He was pleased that so many of his horses had taken a liking to Charles. The fact that the horses trusted him--and the dogs seemed to like him, and the barn cats tolerated his presence--told Arthur that Charles was a good man. A trustworthy man. 

Charles had lived up to the horses’ expectations, though. As they all reached the fence, Charles fished several carrots out of his pockets-- _my pockets, I think,_ Arthur thought with a dizzy jolt of arousal, realizing that Charles was wearing a pair of Arthur’s battered old jeans--and gave one to each horse, crooning sweetly to them and petting their noses. 

“You’re up early,” Charles remarked, smiling at Arthur. He wasn’t wrong--the sun had only just cleared the eastern band of the Grizzly Mountains and was shining butter-yellow across Arthur’s fields, winking in the cowpond and slowly warming the roof of his house. 

“You hear the cats this mornin’?” Arthur asked, nudging a happily-munching Blue out of the way to get to a particularly dense tangle in Kestrel’s mane. The mare, a pretty silver dapple who was too fond of rolling around in the dirt, swatted Arthur with her tail and went back to nosing at Charles for more treats. 

“Not really,” Charles admitted, turning his palms over so the horses could see he was fresh out of carrots. “I felt you get up, I think, but I’m used to sleeping through truck stops. Not much can get me out of bed.” 

Arthur smiled too, saving that information for later. “Well, the cats were makin’ an unholy racket,” he said. “When the dogs joined in I figured I oughta get up an’ take care of ‘em before they unionized an’ came back armed.” 

Charles snorted and nudged Arthur’s cup of coffee closer to his hand. Arthur took it, giving Kestrel’s tangled mane a break, and leaned up against the fence opposite Charles. They were close enough to touch, separated by only the fence, and they’d been more intimate with each other in the past twelve hours than Arthur had been with anyone, ever, in his entire life. 

Not that he and Charles had done much talking, aside from the occasional gasp or murmur or shout, but still. 

_He knows me,_ Arthur thought. _He don’t know all of it, but he knows me._

Arthur was still trying to sort out how he felt about that, but he figured he’d have more time later, once Charles was off again. For now, he just wanted to savor the morning. 

“So who’s this?” Charles asked, breaking the easy quiet and leaning across the fence, offering his hand for Kestrel to nose. She lipped his fingers politely. “Kestrel, right?”

“Yeah, this is Kes,” Arthur said, setting his coffee down to continue brushing her out. 

“What is she?” 

“Hosea thinks she’s a fox trotter, but we ain’t sure,” Arthur said. “She ain’t come with paperwork.” 

“Where’d you find her?” Charles asked. 

Arthur grimaced. “I--well. There was a circus come to town, ‘bout three years ago. Miss Kestrel here was in the act. Somethin’ with fire an’ hoops an’ shit. Me an’ a couple’a the other boys went for a night, after we’d been drinkin’. We… took exception to how some’a the workers were treatin’ the animals.” 

Honestly Arthur didn’t remember much of that night, other than getting Kestrel loose, hoping up on her back, and taking her off across the plains towards his house. He’d slunk back into Valentine the next morning to find that Bill and John had burned down the big top, Lenny’d freed the elephant, and Javier had roped some of the circus workers into convincing the circus’s mangy, underfed lion to chase the ringmaster across the Heartlands, like some kind of particularly low-budget hillbilly adaptation of a Bradbury novel. 

To say that Hosea had not been pleased with their antics had been an understatement. Rounding up all of the animals had been a nightmare, as had bribing the county sheriff's deputies to look the other way when the ringmaster'd tried to press charges. Nobody’d died, though, and Arthur had ended up with a very pretty horse. Kestrel had been skittish and shy for months, but Arthur'd been patient with her and she'd come out of her shell after a little while, and now she was a sweetheart. 

Charles cocked his head, reading between the lines. Arthur'd just admitted that he'd stolen Kestrel, in a roundabout kind of way. Arthur saw him put it all together, dark eyes widening and then narrowing in understanding. Something in Arthur’s stomach thrilled, to be seen like that. Mary hadn’t wanted to look, not really, and Eliza hadn’t ever given herself the time to learn Arthur. 

But Charles was looking. 

“Nobody ever came lookin’ for her,” Arthur added quickly. “An’ she’s better off here, believe me.” 

Charles considered Arthur for a moment, then shrugged. “I can’t stand to watch someone hit an animal. And she is pretty,” he added, tickling Kestrel under her chin. Kestrel whuffed and nibbled his fingers.

Arthur relaxed a bit, pleased. Charles had known about some of the shit Arthur’d gotten up to as a boy, stint in juvie included, but in Arthur’s opinion all kids were criminals, a little. Hearing about Arthur’s childhood escapa des--a few minor arsons, a bit of shoplifting, a couple of small little assaults--was one thing. 

Hearing about full-on illegal shit was quite another, was the kind of thing that chased nice, respectable people like Charles off, and Arthur was starting to realize that he liked Charles a lot. He didn’t want Charles to run off. 

_More’n I should, maybe._ Not that Arthur was going to stop. He was too old to hope for a wedding or anything like that, for a relationship that lasted longer than a few months. Arthur’d gotten pretty good at separating his wants and his desires from his expectations. Charles was fun, and he was having fun. 

But he wouldn’t stick around forever, and there was no point in pretending that he would. Arthur ought to guard his heart better. 

_Tomorrow,_ he thought to himself. _Tomorrow, I’ll start to be better about it._

Even as he promised himself that he’d start walling his heart off, Arthur knew he wouldn’t, not really. 

He pulled himself out of his morose thoughts with some effort. “You wanna take her out?” he asked Charles. “She’s a good ride, if a bit skittish.” 

Charles looked Kestrel up and down with a horseman’s eye, noting her short back, her smooth muscle, her strong legs. “Sure,” he said. “I’ve never ridden a fox trotter before. Who will you take?”

“Hemingway, most like,” said Arthur. The little mustang was a good match for Kestrel. Rooster was too high-strung. 

The little bay, hearing his name, pricked his ears forward. 

“Yes, you,” Arthur said, a smile tugging at his mouth. “C’mon, big feller, hop on over here.” He gestured to Charles. “We can go down to the river this time, if y’want. Should be a nice ride.” 

Charles’s eyes brightened. “You got a pole I could borrow?” 

“Sure,” Arthur said, amused. “Why, you gonna feed me?”

“If you behave,” said Charles, taking Kestrel by the halter and guiding her towards the barn. 

Arthur laughed. 

They had a good afternoon by the river. They turned the horses loose to graze along the bank and Charles fished with practiced ease, pulling salmon out of the water with smooth, graceful motions. Arthur was starting to think that he was sleeping with a super-man; it seemed as if there was nothing Charles couldn’t do, so long as he gave himself the time to figure it out right beforehand. 

Arthur kind of hated fishing, a little--all that boredom made him restless and grouchy--but he’d brought his sketchbook, so he took refuge underneath a tree and sketched while Charles fished. 

He sketched Hemingway and Kestrel first, trying to capture their elegant lines, their high spirits, in ink and charcoal. He sketched a few of the salmon, too, the little ones that Charles threw back and the big cocks that he kept with their pink sides and their jaws snarled into hooks, ready to fight both each other and the river to reach their spawning grounds. 

Then he ran out of things to draw and sketched Charles. 

Arthur occupied himself with that for a while, drawing and redrawing him, his broad, kind face, his big hands, his strong shoulders. Arthur had a good memory and he wasn’t half-bad at committing his memories down to paper -- the likenesses he put there weren’t perfect, didn’t even really do Charles much justice, but they were there. 

“Think this ought to do us?” Charles asked, loping back over some time later with a brace of pink salmon, six or seven of the bastards strung up and ready for a good grilling. 

Arthur raised an eyebrow. Hosea, a consummate fisherman, would be impressed with Charles's haul, and maybe even impressed that Arthur'd manage to snag such a good fisherman for himself. “Yeah,” he said, “oughta do us, I think. You wanna eat here or head back?” Fresh salmon grilled over a campfire was one of life's rare treats, despite the trouble one had to go to to catch the damn things. 

“Back,” said Charles, smiling a little, self-depreciating. “I got this honey glaze recipe I want to try, and I know you've got some honey in your pantry.”

“You are full of surprises, Mister Smith,” Arthur said, standing to collect the horses. "An' I do? I don't think I've ever bought honey." 

“I did,” said Charles easily, “I tend to keep more in my fridge than just beer and onions. I brought some things with me this time to help me out.” 

Arthur chucked a pine cone at him, hitting Charles square in the chest, but Charles did have a point. 

The ride back was easy and dinner was as delicious as promised, though Arthur privately thought that he’d probably enjoy the taste of shoe leather so long as Charles was the one who was cooking it. 

After dinner the entire farm wanted another round of feeding and head-scratching and belly-rubbing--even the horses, several of whom saw Hemingway roll over onto his back like a puppy so Arthur could scratch him underneath his chest and decided that they wanted the same treatment, while Charles laughed--and then after that Arthur and Charles fucked in the living room again, still too new at it all to be able to keep their hands off each other long enough to make it to the bedroom. 

_A pretty good night all in all,_ Arthur thought to himself, drowsing on the floor. He was glad that his floors were wood instead of carpet. Wood was easier to clean, and didn't give him rugburn across his ass. _Though,_ he though, _if this kind of thing is gonna be a regular occurrence, I'm gonna need to buy some rugs._ Arthur's damn back was sore, and he was starting to feel pretty bad about the hardwood bruises on Charles’s knees.

“What do you want to do tomorrow?” Charles asked, just as drowsy. He had thrown an arm across Arthur's chest proprietorially and Arthur found that he liked the weight of it pretty well. “I’m in town ‘til the day after.” 

“Dunno,” Arthur murmured around an enormous yawn. He thought about it. He did have an idea or two of how to spend some of their time, but even thinking about it made him nervous. He swallowed and made himself say it anyway. “You wanna… you wanna go into Lost Country? Properly, I mean? Meet the rest of the crew?”

Charles was quiet for a minute. 

“Yeah,” he finally said, voice overloud in the expectant silence that had gathered around them in the dark, comfortable folds of Arthur's living room. “Yeah, I think I’d like that a lot.” 

Arthur smiled. 

\---

“Let’s take your bike,” Charles said the next day, as evening had started to creep over the horizon and Arthur had finally pulled himself together long enough to get properly dressed and comb back his hair. He and Charles had spent the day wrangling the horses one by one, bringing them into the barn to get brushed down and to get further used to Charles, and even though he'd showered, Arthur still thought he smelled a bit like horse. Between his regular herd and the boarders, he had 

Arthur, who was mid-stroke with the comb, paused. “You sure?” he asked. “We can take the Bonneville, it ain’t a big deal. ‘S just down the road a ways.” 

“It’s too nice a night out,” Charles explained. “And taking the horses would take too long, I think. I want to feel the wind.” 

“Well, in that case, if you ain’t mind ridin’ on the back,” Arthur said, covering up his surprise. Most men didn’t wanna ride on the back of another man’s bike. It was a masculinity thing. Arthur himself hadn't ridden on the back of another man's bike since he was fourteen or fifteen and hanging on to the edges of Dutch's kutte, though that was mostly because he thought most of his friends were shit riders.

Charles had proved before that he wasn’t most men, though, so Arthur didn’t really know why he was surprised. 

“An’, uh, sorry about how handsy I’m gonna be when we get back here,” Arthur added, sheepishly. He thought of riding all the way down to Lost Country with Charles pressed up warm against his back, a hand on Arthur's hip, and his dick twitched with interest. 

Charles hummed a laugh. “I won’t hold it against you,” he said, eyes crinkling. “Now c’mon, you look fine. I’m hungry.” 

Arthur pulled a face but did as Charles asked, abandoning the comb. They locked up the house and clamored up on the back of Arthur’s bike. 

Once they’d gotten themselves settled, Arthur realized that he would be a lucky man to make it all the way to Lost Country. He and Charles were both big men and there wasn’t much room up on the bike. Charles’s chest and stomach were flush against Arthur’s back, his big thighs knocking and jostling against Arthur’s own, and they had arranged themselves in such away that the shape of Charles's dick just barely brushed against the top of Arthur's ass every time Charles shifted. His scent made Arthur dizzy.

“Ready?” Arthur rasped, already too interested for his own good. Charles shifted again, dick bumping the small of Arthur's back, and Arthur had to swallow down his answering surge of desire. 

“Ready,” said Charles, right in Arthur’s ear--he _knew_ what he was doing, the bastard--and Arthur did the only thing he was able to; he kicked his bike to life, hoping the roar of it drowned out the bitten-off moan rising in his throat as Charles’s breath tickled his ear. 

Once they actually made it out onto the road, Charles eased up a bit, probably because he didn’t want to fucking die in a fiery crash if Arthur got too distracted and laid the bike down. 

_Not that I would,_ Arthur thought, but still. 

Lost Country’s parking lot was crammed full, shitty boosted pick-ups jostling for space against dented minivans and duct-taped two-doors. Arthur grimaced. Nights at the bar had been picking up lately, it seemed. Business was just about the same as it always was in the mornings, though running deliveries was still becoming a larger and larger task by the day. 

Arthur brought his bike around the back, pulling it in close to the kitchen door. Charles shifted his weight easily, helping Arthur keep the bike balanced, and swung himself off the right side of the bike while Arthur went off the left. 

“Busy night,” Charles remarked. They could hear music thumping even from the back of the shop and the smell of cigarette smoke and spilled beer swept over them with a gust of wind. Arthur wrinkled his nose. 

“We can come back a diff’rent night,” Arthur offered. “The bar’s always here, if you’re lookin’ to avoid a crowd.” 

Charles grimaced thoughtfully, but shrugged. “We’re here already,” he said. “It’s fine. If it’s too crowded, we can leave, go riding, maybe.” 

Arthur shrugged. The thought of going farther than the distance between the bar and his house with Charles snug against him back made him nearly breathless. “Hold on,” he said. “Lemme check the kitchen, make sure we ain’t gonna be in the way.” The back door was locked, mostly to keep out any broke-ass cowhands who couldn’t pay up at the bar but wanted to sneak a drink anyway. Arthur fished his keys out of his pocket and shouldered the door open, sticking his head in cautiously. 

Pearson was at the stovetop, cooking a few different things at once, switching his attention between a big pot of formless, uniformly-brown chili and a grill topped with a few sizzling burger patties. Mrs. Grimshaw was watching a surly Bill and an irritated Karen chop vegetables. The door leading out of the kitchen into the bar was open and a foot was disappearing through it--Abigail, maybe, on her way out with a few burgers and a tray full of beer. 

Everything looked fairly normal. The door to Dutch’s office was firmly closed. 

“Arthur?” Pearson asked, catching sight of Arthur in the door. He turned away from the stovetop, completely ignoring the grill and its burgers, and grinned. “You back on the night shift?” 

“Naw,” Arthur said, pushing the door open further and clearing the way for Charles. “I ain’t been let off the hook yet. We’re here on my time off.” 

Charles stepped in after Arthur, peering around curiously. Arthur didn’t blame him. Lost Country had only ever passed its health inspections through chicanery, misdirection and outright bribery. The county health inspector despised the. Everything was _clean,_ more or less--Mrs. Grimshaw didn’t tolerate a sloppy shop--but there were definitely some creative interpretations in electrical wiring and some interesting and precarious configurations of machinery lying around, most of them hazardous to the unwary. 

Pearson’s eyebrows went up. Mrs. Grimshaw’s attentions didn’t waver from Bill and Karen--they were in the doghouse, no doubt, probably for drinking on the job where Mrs. Grimshaw could see them--but Arthur could tell that she had her ears turned in his direction, paying keen attention. 

Bill and Karen had a rare moment of good sense and didn’t look up from their chopping. 

Arthur resisted the urge to flash his teeth at all of them, like a pissy dog guarding a favorite bone. He forced himself to relax. 

He held a hand out, just barely skimming the small of Charles’s back. Charles shot him a reassuring half-smile. 

“Charles,” he said, clearing his throat. “This is Mister Pearson, Missus Grimshaw, and Bill Williamson. You’ve met Karen. Everybody, this is Charles.” 

“Hey, I know you,” Bill said, taking Arthur’s introduction as an excuse to escape Mrs. Grimshaw’s clutches. He set his knife down and strode over, hand out. He wasn’t smiling much, but then Bill never really smiled, and Arthur was alright with Bill using him and Charles to get out of working if it meant that Bill kept his weirdness to himself. 

It wasn’t that Arthur thought Bill was gay. Arthur had never really given it much thought, to be honest. He didn’t find Bill that interesting. But in Arthur’s experience, men of a certain inclination tended to be able to spot other men with other, compatible inclinations, and Bill’s dishonorable discharge from the Army hadn’t come from a lack of enthusiasm in killing folks on Bill’s part.

Arthur hadn’t really taken any men to his bed since Bill’d joined up, aside from a weekend or two with Albert, but Dutch’s people gossipped like schoolgirls. Bill’d found out about Arthur’s inclinations somehow, and while he’d never confronted Arthur about it he’d always been a bit… odd, about it all, and he’d been odder ever since Arthur’d taken up with Charles. Jealous, maybe. Arthur couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Nice to meet you,” Charles said, politely. He caught sight of Bill’s tattoos--a red diamond between the first and second knuckle of Bill’s middle finger, and a grinning red devil dancing up Bill’s forearm--and his smile widened, became a hair more genuine. “Red Devils, right? Where’d you serve?”

“‘Nam, seventy-four,” said Bill, surprised. He looked between Charles and Arthur, brow furrowing. Arthur’s distaste for the U.S Military was well-established. “You serve?”

“Rangers, first bat,” Charles replied. “Panama and Saudi Arabia, eighty-nine and ninety-one. Didn’t stick around for Iris Gold.” 

Pearson, hearing that Charles was another Army man and not a Navy vet like himself--though Arthur still had doubts about the legitimacy of that particular claim--deflated a bit, but he still stepped forward with an enthusiastic greeting and a handshake, determined not to be outdone by Bill. 

Arthur kept an eye on them all, but Charles was polite and friendly enough, though he was not keen on sharing details of his time in the Rangers, even though Bill had started to push him for stories, keen to relive his own glory days. 

Mrs. Grimshaw saw which way the wind was blowing and swept in for a rescue. “Bill Williamson, you get back to work,” she scolded. “Go bus tables or somethin’, and don’t let me catch you drinkin’ on the clock again!” 

Bill grumbled, but let Charles be before he caught any more of Mrs. Grimshaw’s ire. Pearson turned back around to rescue his burgers before they burned to complete inedibility. 

The men now safely out of the way, Karen turned to Charles with a devilish grin, batting her eyelashes flirtatiously. 

She opened her mouth, no doubt about to start in with a “Hey, sugar,” but Arthur cut her off at the pass. 

“We ain’t here to skulk in the back,” he said gruffly, putting a protective hand on Charles’s hip to ward off Karen's flirtations, not that Charles needed Arthur to protect him. “We’ll just get goin’, yeah? Wouldn’t wanna distract ya.” 

“Aw, you’re no fun,” Karen pouted, but Mrs. Grimshaw rolled her eyes and gave Karen a mostly-gentle swat across the back of her head. 

“Nice to see you, Arthur,” she said, ever the lady of the house. “And nice to meet you, Mister…?”

“Smith,” Charles said. He didn’t seem to know quite what to do with Mrs. Grimshaw, who was a hellcat even at fifty-five with a thick band of grey in her black hair. 

“Mister Smith,” said Mrs. Grimshaw, firmly. She shooed them off with a wave of her hand. “And you, Miss Karen, you’ve got a hell of a lot more onions to chop before I even think about forgivin’ you--”

Arthur guided Charles out of the kitchen with a barrage of curses ringing in their ears. 

Arthur grimaced apologetically. “She’s always like that, I’m afraid,” he said. “Some of us need a firmer hand than others.” 

“I have an auntie like that,” Charles said wryly. “She’s much the same with all of us cousins. She used to say that Sunday dinners with all of us were like trying to sit down to dinner with a pack of wolves.”

Arthur laughed. “A pack of wolves,” he said. “We’re a bit like that, I guess. You oughta fit in just fine. C’mon.” 

Arthur brought Charles out from behind the bar and into the shop proper, which was packed to its battered old gills. Arthur whistled to himself. He’d only seen Lost Country this packed a few times, usually only after a big auction or a very bad storm. 

Neither had happened in the last few days, as far as Arthur knew, but the bar was crowded anyways. Cowboys, shepherds, ranchers and farmhands had all come in side to side and were chugging beer like water. A few women were mixed in with the crowd, most of them hookers, and Arthur could just about taste the promise of sex and violence in the air. 

He swept the bar, looking for who of his friends was working tonight. 

Abigail was behind the bar, shaking margaritas. Javier was with her, keeping impatient cowhands at bay with his jokes. Dutch had settled into his preferred corner and was entertaining a few local boys, as he was wont to do, his hands tracing a story through the air. Sean had the door and Lenny was busing tables, keeping an eye out for trouble. Micah was out on the floor, moving between tables and chairs like a predator, probably just as excited about the prospect of a fight as some of the rowdier-looking boys starting to gather around the pool table.

Sadie was on too, moving around with a tray of drinks and a mulish expression on her face. She looked like she was about one more wandering hand away from murdering a man.

_Probably a good thing Micah’s on tonight,_ Arthur thought grudgingly. Micah was an ass, but he could fight. With Dutch on the floor the fighting would all be done in the parking lot or behind the bar, but there would be a fight. Arthur could feel it. 

“C’mon, let’s meet Abigail,” Arthur said, steering Charles towards Abigail and Javier. Javier caught sight of them first, crowing out a “Hey, Arthur! And Arthur’s friend! Charles, right?” 

“Hey, Javier,” Arthur said, shouldering his way past two extremely-drunk ranchers who shot Arthur poisonous looks over their sloshing beers. Once they realized who he was they looked away. Local boys, then, who'd either caught one of Arthur's fists before or had known a friend or two who had. Sometimes the townsfolks' wariness of Arthur was annoying, especially when he _wanted_ a fight, but tonight Arthur used his reputation like a bulwark, pushing the crowd to either side. 

Arthur’s shoes stuck to the floor a little. He hoped that Charles didn’t mind the grime. Lost Country was always a little nicer in the morning. 

Abigail heard Javier call out and perked up. “Arthur’s here?” she said. She caught sight of him and smiled. 

“Hey,” she said. “Who’s your friend?” 

Arthur knew damn well that Abigail knew who Charles was--she worked nights, always had, but she was just as much a gossip as any of them, and she and Mary-Beth told each other everything. 

Still, Abigail was good people. She’d had a shit time of it when John had run out on her--she and Jack had actually crashed with Arthur for a few months, learning how to mind the horses and chase the chickens--and was just starting to get back on her feet now, negotiating a tricky balance between keeping John a part of Jack’s life and also making sure she and the boy would be alright if John decided to run off again. She'd fallen in with them all during the bad old days, long before they'd all hunkered down in Valentine, and Arthur'd always been as fond of her as if she'd been his own sister. 

“Charles, this is Abigail,” said Arthur, rolling his eyes. “She’s a good friend. Abigail, you know this is Charles.” 

“Hi,” Abigail said, reaching across the bar to shake Charles’s hands. “You’re a braver man than most, takin’ up with this one here.” 

“Hey!” Arthur said, affronted, as Charles laughed. 

“I’m not that brave,” Charles told her. “Just stubborn. And he makes good coffee.” 

Abigail smiled, like Charles had passed some sort of test. Honestly Arthur didn’t understand Abigail, not really. He admired the hell out of her, of course. She’d really stepped up when John had left her flat broke. Many folks would have given up, if they’d been left with a toddler and a mortgage and mounting bills, but Abigail had taken care of it. She’d sold the house, moved in with Arthur for a bit, and gotten another job in Emerald Ranch to pay all the bills. She'd quit drinking, quit smoking, and quit making extra money on the side in the Saints, too. She was a good mother, and a stronger person than most folks Arthur knew. 

But despite all of that, Abigail had taken John back when he’d wandered back in a year later like he’d only stepped out for milk and gotten lost on his way home. If Arthur’d been the one left behind like that he would’ve killed John, or at least turned him back out in the cold. 

Abigail had yelled at him, had fought with him, had had screaming matches with him in Lost Country’s back room, but she’d taken John back. 

Arthur didn’t understand that, not really, but he respected Abigail anyway. He wanted her to like Charles. 

She gave Arthur a little nod, almost imperceptible, and Arthur nodded back, pleased. 

_She likes him,_ he thought. _That’s good._

“You sure picked a hell of a night to come in, brother,” Javier said, pushing a few glasses of beer in Arthur and Charles’s direction. 

“Yeah, what’s goin’ on?” Arthur asked curiously, passing one beer to Charles and taking the other for himself. “It been this crowded the last few days?” 

“The last few weeks, actually,” Javier said. “There’s some backyard rodeo circuit in town, out in the Heartlands somewhere. Bunch’a extra people are in town, and we’re the cheapest place to drink. Smithfield’s charges out the ass.” 

Arthur whistled again. Charles took a sip of his beer and made a happy sound--this one was darker than the reddish IPA Arthur'd given him a few weeks ago, a porter or a stout or whatever the boys were calling it these days, but apparently Charles liked it just as much. 

“Still, it ain’t all bad,” Javier said. “A little rough--you know rodeo types--but the money’s been good. It’s what we needed, honestly. You hear Sean was kicked out of the Saints?” 

“No,” Arthur said with a groan, shaking his head and taking a pull from his beer. He wasn’t surprised--Sean had never been able to hold down a place to live for more than a month or two. He hadn’t even known that Sean was posting up at the Saints. That must’ve been a recent development. “How much is he behind on?”

“Three-eighty,” Javier said. “Don’t worry about it, he’ll be fine. We’ve been so busy the last few weeks that we’re all coming up a few hundred ahead. You included.” 

Arthur usually did his accounting at the beginning of the month. He was still a bit out from July--he hadn’t worried about tracking his paystubs, not really. Arthur was a goddamn adult--he had savings. Meager savings, admittedly, but he had enough money saved up that he didn’t have to worry about falling behind on rent or anything like that. 

“I’ll talk to Sean next week,” Arthur grumbled. 

Javier waved his concern aside. “Don’t worry about it,” he repeated. He jerked his head to the side, towards Dutch’s table. “Dutch’s taking care of it.” 

Arthur nodded, relaxing. He nudged Charles with his shoulder--Charles had been watching the whole exchange with interest. “Anyway, we’ll get outta your way,” Arthur said. “I jus’ wanted t’ bring Charles ‘round, is all. Introduce him to everybody.” 

The significance of _that_ wasn’t lost on Javier or Abigail. They traded looks with each other, then with Arthur. 

“Well, it's nice to meet you, Charles,” Abigail said, her smile genuine. “I’m sure we’ll be seein’ you around, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Charles, simply. 

Arthur blinked, affection swelling in his belly, and looked away before he could do something embarrassing like kiss Charles in front of all his friends. 

“C’mon,” Arthur said, voice rough. “Let’s give you the grand tour, huh?” 

Charles obliged, letting Arthur drag him around to meet just about everyone on shift that night. 

Sadie took one look at Charles and declared him a good sort of person. Lenny seemed to like him, though he was a bit busy slinging drinks to chat. Sean bounded over to say hello with all the energy of a delighted puppy, but then had to go off to deal with a drunk feller who put his hands on a lady without her permission. For obvious reasons Arthur avoided Micah, given the energy of the bar. 

Finally, there was no one left to introduce Charles to but Dutch. Charles had taken to everyone else well enough, though he was hard to read in the noise and chaos of the bar. 

Arthur knew that Dutch was waiting, though. Dutch hadn’t said anything, hadn’t shouted across the bar or called Arthur’s name, but Arthur could feel Dutch’s eyes watching as he and Charles moved around the floor. 

“What are we putting off?” Charles asked, amused, after Arthur had turned around in vain a few times, looking for someone else to talk to. 

“Meetin’ Dutch,” Arthur admitted. 

Charles raised an eyebrow. “Why?” he asked. “Isn’t he your father? Are you--” and for the first time Arthur saw a flicker of doubt in Charles’s dark eyes -- “are you worried he won’t approve?”

“Nah,” said Arthur. He hadn’t told Charles about his talk with Dutch behind Lost Country last week, mostly because he didn’t want to die of embarrassment. “It’s just--well. You ever bring anybody home to meet your aunts?"

Charles grimaced in understanding. “That’s fair.” 

Arthur heaved a sigh. “Ain’t no use bein’ a chickenshit ‘bout it, I guess,” he said. He met Charles’s eyes. “I ain’t worried. C’mon. Let’s go meet the old man.” 

As Charles and Arthur headed over to his corner, Dutch gently shooed the folks who’d gathered around him off, sending them back to the bar for more drinks or to the floor to try their luck at the pool and with the hookers. 

“Arthur!” Dutch said, as Arthur approached. He stood up, rolling his shoulders, and stepped across the floor to meet them. “And you must be Charles. I’ve heard a bit about you, son! I’m Dutch.” 

“Nice to meet you,” said Charles, just as polite as he’d been all night.

“Good to meet you too,” Dutch said. He flashed Arthur a glittering, amused glance. Arthur scowled at him. His eyes flickered back to Charles and hardened. “You stickin’ around, then?”

“I am,” said Charles, calm as could be. Arthur was impressed. Most men couldn’t meet Dutch’s eyes when Dutch got hard like that. Dutch preferred charm and wit to outright intimidation, a consummate smooth-talker, but he was an intimidating man when he wanted to be. 

Dutch eyed Charles for a long heartbeat, still holding onto his hand, then broke into an easy smile. “Well, good,” he said. “Our Arthur’s taken quite a shine to you, I understand, and that’s a good thing. Me and old Hosea like to see him happy.” 

Arthur relaxed, letting out a breath he didn’t know that he was holding. He’d been half-worried he was going to have to whack Dutch in front of Charles, and that wouldn’t have made anybody happy. 

Over the next several minutes, Dutch quizzed Charles relentlessly, ferreting out his history -- orphan and foster kid, like Arthur, did some time in the system, joined up with the Rangers for a few years, got into long-haul trucking as a way to earn some steady money upon landing stateside -- and shared a few stories of his own, most of them told with the intention of embarrassing Arthur. 

“So he’s standing there, naked as the day he was born, and old Hosea turns to me and says--”

“ _I didn’t know there was a full moon out tonight, Dutch, did you?_ ” Charles finished, smiling faintly. 

Dutch hooted, impressed. “He told you that one, did he?” He looked between Arthur and Charles speculatively. “He really does like you, then.” Dutch settled back into his chair and waved a hand, apparently satisfied. “Go on, then. Enjoy the rest of your night. Welcome to Lost Country, son. We’re glad to have you.” 

“Glad to be here,” Charles said, still polite, and turned to Arthur. He raised an eyebrow. 

Arthur read his intentions in his face and nodded. He was ready to get out of here, too. The bar was too loud, too crowded. They’d done what they’d come here to do--introduce Charles to the rest of Arthur’s family--and now they were free to go back to Arthur’s house and spend the rest of their night with each other before Charles had to ride out in the afternoon. 

“C’mon,” Arthur said, reaching out to brush his fingertips against Charles’s hip. “Let’s go out the back, looks like there’s gonna be a dust-up by the front in a minute or two.” 

Micah, Sean and Lenny had all drifted to the front door, where a thick knot of rowdy cowboys, all of them with tacky gold belt buckles showing a bucking bull, had congregated. 

Arthur and Charles hopped over the bar one after the other, waving goodbye to Abigail and Javier, then slipped out back through the kitchen and right into another knot of men. 

Arthur stopped, his eyes narrowing. One of the men, a big feller with a shock of jet-black hair, had his grubby hands on Arthur’s bike. The others--five, Arthur counted quickly, smelling blood in the air like a hound--were standing around guffawing to each other, passing a joint between them. One of them knocked back the last of a bottle of beer and threw the bottle to the ground, where it shattered across the pavement. 

Arthur scowled.

“Litterin’s a five hundred dollar fine, fellers,” Arthur said loudly, taking a step forward. The big man who had his hands on Arthur’s bike looked up. 

He was wearing a gold belt buckle too, the same bucking bull dancing across it as the men inside. 

_Rodeo clowns,_ Arthur thought, disgusted. Arthur didn't mind barrel riders or cattle ropers, found them to be generally good sorts, if a bit rough, but he'd met too many bull and bronc riders who'd hurt their animals to care much for them, as a group. Any man who shocked a horse or a bull just to get it to buck a little harder was not a man Arthur would get along with. 

“Ain’t litterin’, _feller,_ ” one of the other men returned. He was drunk as shit, Arthur could hear it in his heavy, rounded words. He didn't have a buckle across his belt, but he had the same kind of bowlegged swagger as the other man. “'M just havin’ fun, is all.” 

Arthur’s lip curled. “This spot’s for employees only,” he said. Charles was still and quiet at Arthur's back, watchful as a wolf. “Party’s inside. An’ it ain’t polite to touch another man’s bike.” 

“What if I ain’t interested in bein’ polite?” the big man taunted, though he did take his hands away from Arthur's bike and stumble towards Arthur, swelling up like a bullfrog about to croak. “Who’s gonna stop me, your boyfriend here?” 

Arthur flashed Charles a quick glance. Charles’s face was set, his hands out and ready. 

_I’m behind you,_ his eyes said. 

Arthur nodded to himself and turned his attention back to the big man and his friends. “You got five seconds to get the hell outta my sight, pal,” he said. “Otherwise it ain’t gonna be a good night for you, I can promise you that.” 

The big man laughed. “I’d like to see you try somethin’, boy,” he said. “We got you three to one!” 

Arthur bared his teeth at the man, settling himself down into a ready stance, feet wide. His awareness expanded, heart kicking up, breath slowing down. He could feel Charles behind and beside him, solid as a mountain. He could feel the wind cool and sweet against his neck. 

The parking lot erupted. 

The bigger feller went straight for Arthur, rearing back to bring a fist down on top of Arthur’s head. Arthur was faster. He dropped his shoulder and sprang, pushing all of his weight behind it. His shoulder hit the big guy in the solar plexus. The big guy’s breath went out in a rush and Arthur’s momentum carried them both forward, hard. 

Arthur kept his feet. The big guy didn’t. He crashed to the ground, wheezing, face purpling like he was about to throw up, and Arthur put him out of the fight for good by kicking him square in the side of the head. 

Pain flared up Arthur’s foot, but he ignored it. 

_Shoulda worn my steel-toes,_ he had time to think, searching for his next opponent, and then he had no time to think at all. 

Six on two wasn’t great odds, but Arthur and Charles weren’t drunk and the other fellers all were. Arthur tussled with a red-haired man for maybe half a minute, trading blows, blocking the man’s wild punches with his forearms. He put the red-haired man down with a fist to the teeth, star-sparks of pain flashing up his knuckles, and turned to see that Charles had taken a black man with a shaved head down and was well on his way to beating the absolute shit out of a beefy feller with a longhorn tattooed across his shoulder. 

Arthur’s gut thrilled. Charles fought like a boxer, fast and graceful, the power behind his punches bone-rattling and focused. Arthur’s mouth went dry at the sight. 

Another man, this one skinny and straw-blond, tried to bum rush Arthur with a two-by-four he'd picked up from somewhere. Arthur ducked, the wood whistling through the air over his head, and tackled the man. They both hit the pavement hard enough that even Arthur saw stars. 

Stars in his eyes didn’t prevent Arthur from perching atop the man’s chest and walloping him, though, so Arthur wasn’t too bothered, at least not until a pair of hands found Arthur’s shoulders and bodily hauled him off the blond man. 

Arthur’s new assailant was tall and wiry, a cowboy down to his worn-out face, and he sure could punch like a cowboy, too. He got Arthur in the mouth and Arthur coughed, spitting blood, before he brought his own hands up, planted them in the cowboy’s shoulders, and _shoved._

The cowboy stumbled and went sprawling back over a downed man Charles must’ve put on the ground. There were only two men left now, the cowboy and a big, pale feller who had blood dripping into his eyes, squared off with Charles a few feet away. 

“Doin’ alright?” Arthur called, taking a second to set his own stance as the cowboy came up off his back, staggering, and shook off the dizziness of his fall. 

“Just fine!” Charles shouted back. “You?”

“Pretty good!” said Arthur jovially, and ducked neatly as the cowboy came at him with a wicked right hook. Arthur punched the man in the gut, short and hard, then boxed him at his left temple. 

The cowboy folded up and hit the pavement. Arthur wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, tasting copper. His hand came away red. His knuckles were torn and swollen and there was a cut above Arthur’s eye that was slowly leaking blood down his face, and his knees and elbows would be bruised to hell tomorrow, but his blood was up, his heart thundering, and he watched Charles square off against the big pale man with interest. 

“Need a hand?” Arthur asked. 

“Nah,” growled Charles. He was bleeding too, his knuckles scraped raw, a cut laid over his cheekbone. “I got this.” 

Arthur settled back on his heels to watch, ready to jump in if Charles needed the help. He watched the muscles in Charles’s arms flex. 

_I kinda wish he didn’t have a shirt on,_ Arthur thought, memorizing the expression on Charles’s face, fierce and focused, and the steady, brutal grace in his hands. 

The pale feller put up a good fight. He had some kind of training too, a beaten-in sense of where and how to move his body, but he clearly wasn’t as good as Charles. 

Charles landed one hit to the man’s jaw, then another below the ribs, and finally a third to the side of the man’s head that put him down on the ground, and just like that the brawl was over. 

Six men lay around Arthur and Charles. A few were starting to moan and stir, but none of them seemed to want to get up and try their luck again. 

Arthur stared at Charles, blood hot. Charles looked back. Something passed in the air between them, crackling and warm. Lightning thudded through Arthur’s veins. 

Off in the distance, a siren began to wail. 

“C’mon,” Charles said, roughly. “Let’s get out of here. I still keep a room at the Saints.” 

That was probably wise. If Arthur tried to take Charles back on his bike, he’d end up fucking him on the side of the road before they hit Bacchus Station, and asphalt left a nasty rash. 

“Lead the way,” Arthur rumbled, and followed Charles off into the night.

\---

“I’ll be gone about two weeks,” said Charles the next morning, tone apologetic, his fingertips still tracing nonsense patterns around Arthur’s tattoos. He’d gone down to the lobby to pick up some coffee and some doughnuts for the pair of them, since Arthur had decided that he was too sore and too content to bother moving. Charles had come back with the coffee and the doughnuts, but he’d also come back with a message from his boss and a new assignment. 

“’S gonna be a long one,” Charles continued. His voice was still rough with sleep. “All the way out to California and back.” 

“Ain’t nothin’ for it, I guess,” Arthur mumbled. He kept his eyes closed, just enjoying Charles’s touch. Charles seemed to have a particular fascination with the broad swath of ink on Arthur’s back and liked to skim the design, tracing the expanse of it with feather-light touches. 

Charles was careful of Arthur’s new bruises, avoiding a nasty scrape over Arthur’s ribs and a black, fist-shaped mark over Arthur’s right shoulder, both of which he’d picked up brawling last night. 

“When I get back, do you want to go camping?” Charles asked. “Get away from everything for a little while?”

Arthur brightened. “Sure,” he said. “I know a sweet little spot up in the Ambarino highlands.” 

“Good,” said Charles, a smile in his words. 

Arthur finally rolled over so he could look at Charles properly. The cut on his cheekbone had scabbed over and his bruises had come in dark and flushed. His hair was free of its usual tail and hung loose around his face, rumpled with sleep. He was wearing his own clothes, for once, and he tasted like coffee and powdered sugar. 

“When d’you ride out?” asked Arthur sleepily. He could probably convince himself to be up for another round, but he also kind of wanted to just draw Charles back into his arms and sleep beside him for a while, their legs and their breath and their bodies tangling together. 

“Two-thirty.” Charles smiled, his eyes turning up again, the warmth in them hard to look at directly. 

“C’mere, then,” said Arthur gruffly. “Ain’t no reason to be up this early ‘less we have to.”

“Lazy,” Charles admonished, but he did what he was told, shrugging his shirt off and slipping back into bed beside Arthur, returning to the all-important task of tracing nonsense patterns between Arthur’s tats until Arthur drifted back off to sleep. 

_A feller could get used to this,_ Arthur thought, fighting sleep just long enough to hum a boneless, deep noise of utter contentment. _A feller could really get used to this._

\---

“Alright, son,” Dutch said, leg swung out over his bike. Charles had hit the breeze a few days ago, set off to California for his long haul, and the weekend had come around again. Hosea was about ready to tear his hair out with the amount of deliveries Dutch seemed insistent on sending off, so Arthur’d figured that it was time to take Dutch out and distract him a bit. “Where we goin’?” 

“Just follow me,” said Arthur, smiling at Dutch with all his teeth. Most of Arthur’s bruises from the brawl had faded by now and he wasn’t quite so sore or stiff. He felt more than up to a long ride with Dutch. “You’ll see.”

Dutch opened his mouth to say something, but whatever he’d wanted to say was lost in the roar of Arthur’s engine as he kicked his bike to life. 

Arthur was off like a shot, whipping out of the parking lot and hitting the road, engine roaring as he picked up speed. He heard the deep growl of Dutch’s bike right behind him. Dutch had been riding motorcycles for almost as long as Arthur had been alive. He knew what he was doing, and he’d likely outpace Arthur if Arthur gave him an opening. Arthur leaned harder on the throttle. He had no intention of giving Dutch an opening. 

Valentine was dust behind them within two minutes and then the state line came and went, West Elizabeth flicking past in a dizzying blur of trees and hills and pretty rivers. Arthur kept up that pace until they crossed the Lower Montana into the plains. 

When he hit the plains, a flat expanse of golden grass, Arthur slowed and let Dutch catch up to him, riding two-by-two down the road. They turned off the highway at Manzanita Post, a town of exactly seven people, all of them related, and kept going south and west, where the scrub steppe of New Austin and the rich desert past the canyons lay waiting. 

A few herds of bison lowed off in the plains. The grass here was yellow-gold, the soil dry and arid, the few trees gnarled and sturdy, rooted strong against the twin seasons of long drought and ferocious storm that marked the turning of the year out here. 

Within the hour they’d reached Hennigan County, where the Hennigan’s Stead Canyons opened in the earth like red veins. 

Arthur pulled over at the lip of the canyons, cutting his engine, and waited for Dutch to do the same. 

“How long’s it been since you’ve gone canyon carvin’?” he asked, after they’d both had some water. The air out here was hot and dry. Heat shimmered off the red- and orange-banded rocks. Condors wheeled up in the sky in lazy spirals, coasting from thermal to thermal. 

Dutch finished off his water bottle and rolled his eyes. “Why, son, you worried about me?” 

Arthur shrugged, feeling mischievous. “A bit, old man,” he said. “You take a fall at your age an’ you might break a hip, or end up with lumbago or somethin’. I’d hate t’see you splutterin’ around with a walker. Might hurt your chances with pretty Miss O’Shea.” 

Dutch chucked his empty water bottle at Arthur’s head. Arthur caught it easily, _tsk_ ing. 

“See?” he said. “Cain’t throw, cain’t keep up with me. You’re gettin’ slow!” 

“I’ll show you slow, you ass,” Dutch growled, playfully. “C’mon, boy. Last one out of the canyon buys the drinks, yeah?” 

“You’re on,” said Arthur, and they were off again. 

Canyon carving was a fast, fun challenge. Arthur’d spent hours and hours cutting up and down canyons all through the Southwest as a young man, skimming corners as close as he could, following the wind and weft of the earth as fast as he dared to go. 

He wasn’t quite as foolhardy now that he was closer to forty than thirty--he’d teased Dutch, but Arthur was a bit too old to shake off a bad fall himself these days. 

Still, he let himself pick up speed as he and Dutch plunged down the mouth of the canyon, thrilling in the wind as it pulled through his hair and wicked sweat away from his face and neck. 

Arthur and Dutch chased each other through the canyons, leaning into the curves, laughing at close shaves and near-misses. Dutch might have gotten older while Arthur wasn’t looking, a little softer as settled life loosened his shoulders and smoothed down his hard edges, but he hadn’t lost an ounce of skill. Dutch rode like his bike, a flashy white ‘55 Harley Panhead, smaller and sleeker than Arthur’s own heavily-modified ‘65, like it was an extension of his body. 

Arthur still won, though. About a half-mile out from the end of the canyonlands, where the towering red rocks opened up onto the low desert, Arthur managed to edge past Dutch coming around a particularly tight bend, and he opened the throttle and let it ride him all the way out into the saguaros.

Dutch came out right behind him, barely a wheel’s distance between them, but Arthur’d still won their little race and whooped, delighted. 

Dutch was laughing too. The ride had taken years off his face. As they bent towards the desert and the low, squat town of Armadillo, little more than a few dusty buildings and one long, low bar, Dutch waved at Arthur to pull over. 

Arthur did, still laughing. 

“See?” he said, as they skimmed over the side of the road and same to a stop, engines cutting off to let the sounds of the desert in. “Told you you’d lost your edge, old man.” 

“Oh, don’t worry, son, your time is comin’,” Dutch shot back, dark eyes sparkling. He rolled his shoulders and stretched, the leather of his jacket creaking. “I needed that,” he admitted. “It’s been… well. It’s been a minute. Thank you, Arthur.” 

Arthur shrugged, pleased. “Figured you could use a break from everythin’,” he said. “The shop an’ the house an’ the woman. It ain’t good to stay in one spot too long. Makes you forget what else’s out in the world.” 

Dutch snorted. “Well, I appreciate it,” he said. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but then he shook his head. “C’mon, let’s find somewhere to drink and bed down for the night, yeah? I owe you, apparently.” 

“Armadillo’s usually got a room or two,” Arthur said. The rooms were usually small, cramped and dirty, but Dutch and Arthur both had stayed in worse places. “C’mon, it ain’t far from here.” 

The road leading out of the canyons through Armadillo could hardly be called a highway. It was little more than a stretch of sandy asphalt, the yellow lines splitting inbound and outbound long since faded in the sun, cat’s eyes busted and broken. 

There was hardly anybody else out on the road either. As Arthur and Dutch rode in, only a few battered pick-ups rattled past, followed by a band of four or five men on motorcycles, all without helmets, leather kuttes flapping behind them like wings as they howled at the sky. 

“Del Lobos, I think,” Dutch shouted across the road to Arthur, once the other bikers had passed. 

Arthur whistled, even though the noise was lost to the road. “All the way up here?” he called back. “I thought they ran outta Laredo an’ Ciudad Juarez.” 

“They did a patch-over for another crew runnin’ out of Tumbleweed!” Dutch shook his head, holding his bike steady on the road. “Was a real bloody business, I heard. The Tumbleweed charter’s runnin’ roughshod all over New Austin. Callin’ themselves Delt-Nah, or somethin’.” 

_Del Lobos, Tumbleweed, New Austin,_ Arthur translated, arranging the letters in his head. DELTNA. He snorted. _Fuckin’ stupid._

Still, the Del Lobos weren’t a joke. The United States had cracked down hard on its outlaw biker gangs, though ones in the south like the Raiders were able to avoid most of the government’s scrutiny. There’d been a time in the late eighties when any man on a motorcycle'd had to go with caution, because the cops would snatch anybody who rode a Harley and wore leather on their back. 

Mexico hadn’t been quite so strict, and from what Arthur’d heard the original Del Lobos charter had gotten in good with Don Neto and started running coke up through Tijuana in the bad old days of the cartel trade. 

Arthur’d never had much interest in going to Mexico, aside from a few fun nights in Mexicali. Javier’d been on the run from Don Neto, though, fleeing north at fifteen with a bounty on his head big enough to make most men set aside any qualms they had about murdering a teenager, so he’d told all of Dutch’s folk to watch out for the Lobos.

The four Lobos didn’t turn back around. Arthur put them out of his mind, leaning across his bars to peer through the growing night at Armadillo. 

Sunsets in the desert were something special. They always had been, ever since Arthur was a boy. His father had hated the desert. Too hot and too cold by turns, he’d said, and utterly without any softness. Arthur’d seen his first desert--the Sonoran--with Dutch and Hosea a few years later and he’d loved it with his entire heart, and not just to spite his then-dead father. 

The sky was closer to the earth here. Arthur didn’t know how to explain it any better than that. The sky was close to the earth and Arthur loved it. 

_Maybe me an’ Charles can come campin’ out here,_ he thought. _I bet he’d like it._

Dusk had fallen fully by the time Dutch and Arthur puttered in to Armadillo. The only bar was also the town’s only motel, so they pulled right up to the side of the low, slouching wooden building, Dutch leading the way inside. Arthur followed. 

“Your winnings, such as they are,” Dutch said dryly, gesturing to encompass the bar. There were only a handful of people in, all of them rangy and worn, cowboys and ranch hands even more beaten down by their lot in life than the ones in Valentine. 

Arthur felt a strange, almost sideways sort of stab of pity for them all. 

Dutch caught the mood of Arthur’s thoughts and shook his head. “This country can’t have its fill of its young men,” he said. “If it don’t spit ‘em out in some godforsaken warzone somewhere, it chews ‘em up here and grinds ‘em to dust.” 

“You gotta put a couple’a drinks in me before you start goin’ on ‘bout politics, Dutch,” Arthur said. “You know that.” 

Dutch laughed. “Fair enough, my boy, fair enough. Barman! Two whiskeys, please!” 

The barman slouched to get what Dutch had ordered, muttering to himself sullenly. He dumped a few fingers of whiskey into a pair of grimy glasses and slid them across the bartop. 

Dutch grimaced, but picked up his own glass. Arthur did the same. “To you, Arthur,” Dutch said. “That was a hell of a ride, son.” 

Arthur clinked his glass against Dutch’s, thumped it down on the table, and knocked his whiskey back. 

“Keep ‘em comin’,” Dutch advised the bartender. “We’re gonna be here a while.” 

Dutch gave Arthur three or four more glasses to get well and truly drunk, the room going soft and hazy around the edges, before Dutch leaned in and said, intently, “Now, tell me, Arthur. What are you readin’ these days?”

Arthur lost the thread of things a little after that. At one point he did remember hopping up on the bar to gain a few feet on Dutch, shouting something about John Steinbeck’s ardent belief in rage and wrath as purifying aspects of human dignity while the bartender, exasperated, tried to pull him back down to the ground by the back of his shirt. 

He definitely remembered telling Dutch that if he tried to bring up the multiplying effects of selfishness as depicted in _The Grapes of Wrath_ and relate them to modern American capitalism again, Arthur was going to hit him with his whiskey glass. 

“That’s what the man wants you to do,” Dutch replied, very serious and very, very drunk. “The man wants you to treat every-- _hic--_ every outside idea like an enemy in the camp, something to be clubbed to death or shot full of lead, instead of-- _hic_ \--a _liberator_ \--”

At some point Arthur came back to himself a little and realized that he and Dutch had left the bar and were now lurching arm in arm across the sands, staggering and stumbling over low bursts of chaparral, grazing their arms on saguaro spines. 

The sky was clear and full above them, stars winking fierce and bright. They weren’t too far out of town, not really, just a few steps beyond the last house before the desert came in. Arthur blinked. He wasn’t sure what they were doing out here--he couldn’t remember. 

Dimly, he knew that they ought to get back inside. The desert was a dangerous place for drunk men, especially at night. Arthur wasn’t interested in getting snakebit this weekend. 

“Dutch,” Arthur slurred, nearly pitching over on his face when he tried to get the other man’s attention He giggled before he could help it, some dim and distant part of himself sitting there with its head in its hands. 

_Thirty-six an’ I still ain’t able to hold m’liquor,_ Arthur thought. 

“Dutch,” he tried again, righting himself with effort. “C’mon, we oughta--we oughta get back to the bar. Bed, maybe. Or a shower. Could use a shower.” 

Dutch didn’t respond. He was looking up at the sky, his expression half a million miles away, cast somewhere up there with all the other bright lights in the world. Arthur caught Dutch’s elbow. 

“Dutch,” he said again, louder. “C’mon. We ain’t wanna sleep out here with the snakes an’ the coyotes.” 

“In a minute, son,” Dutch said. “Go take a piss or somethin’. I wanna--I wanna watch the stars for a minute, that’s all.” 

Arthur snorted but he did kind of have to piss, so he did as he was told. He’d always been more obliging when he was drunk. Sober, Arthur was mean and contrary. Drunk, Arthur was still pretty mean, but he had less of a reason to argue when he was drunk. 

He stumbled back over to the house and unzipped his fly. From here he could still see the bar, which was good--they hadn’t wandered off as far as he’d thought. His bike and Dutch’s were still leaning next to the bar’s side, bars almost touching wind-battered wood. 

Arthur frowned. There was a third bike there, a different shape than their two Panheads. 

_A Fatboy,_ Arthur thought, his thoughts disconnected from his body. He swayed and had to brace his forearm against the side of the house he was pissing on. 

There was a man on top of the Fatboy, sitting in the seat with his arms draped over the bars, and he wasn’t watching the town or the saloon. 

He was watching the desert. He was watching the spot where Dutch and Arthur had crossed out of the town’s limits and left the streetlights behind. Arthur couldn’t see much of the man--the dust had kicked up, stirred by the wind, and the man had pulled a bandana up over his mouth and nose to block it out. He was sitting underneath a streetlight, which was the only reason Arthur saw that his banada was green. 

Arthur frowned harder. 

_That bothers me,_ he thought, trying to claw his way towards a sliver of sobriety. _I don’t--I don’t like that. Why?_

Just then, Dutch’s hand came down on Arthur’s shoulder, startling him. 

“Jesus Christ,” Arthur growled. “Don’t sneak up on a man who’s got his own dick in his hands, Dutch, fuck.” 

“You’ll be fine,” Dutch said dismissively, his eyes twinkling. “Though you better wash those hands when we get back inside, Arthur. I wanna play darts. I think I could win at darts.” 

“You probably could,” Arthur admitted, because he was seeing two of Dutch, one solid and the other paler, washed out. The washed-out Dutch made Arthur sad. 

_Jesus, I’m fuckin’ drunk._

“Excellent!” Dutch crowed. “Then you can buy the next round, yeah? C’mon, son, let’s get those hands washed.”

By the time they managed to stagger up to the bar and back through its doors, falling into its grimy warmth, Arthur had completely forgotten about the man on the motorcycle, and didn’t think about him again for the rest of the night. 

He ended up losing at darts, too, which figured. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: 
> 
> Main content warning for this chapter is violence. Bar brawls, y'all. Also some implied homophobia, though said homophobes get their teeth kicked in. 
> 
> Kestrel is a silver dapple pinto MFT. I glitched her in Chapter II during a playthrough and rode her the entire game. 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading! We are about ready to kick off here in the next.... 10k or so. The next update will be on Sunday!


	6. lost country: vi

June rolled into July during those two weeks Charles was gone working in California. Arthur and Dutch managed to avoid killing themselves out in New Austin and spent a pleasant few days racing each other across the desert flats and doing stupid shit like they were young again, wild and free and a menace to society.

It was good to get out with the old man again. The Dutch who worked Lost Country's floor on Thursday nights was a different man than the one who'd scruffed a fourteen-year-old Arthur by the back of the neck and hauled him into his life. That Dutch hadn't had rents or mortages or electric bills to worry about; that Dutch had been free, as light as air, and he'd taught Arthur to value the same freedom.

It was good to have that Dutch back for a little bit, even if they did have to settle back down into the men they'd become as the weekend wound down to a close and their responsibilities started to call them home. 

The heat followed them back to Valentine and crushed everybody beneath it like a hammer for a good few days, thinning out the rodeo crowd and giving Lost Country a chance to spend a few nights off the county sheriff’s radar. 

Rain followed the heat, torrential and unrelenting. The garden Karen, Tilly and Mary-Beth had planted in Arthur’s yard exploded into flowers, vegetables budding, and the paddocks turned to wet mud, delighting the horses. 

Deliveries slowed to match the weather and Arthur got to spend a few mornings in the shop, for once, helping Hosea fix chairs and tables, grunting at customers and getting teased by the women. 

Most of the men had been moved to the night shift to match the swelling evening crowds. With half the county underwater there wasn’t much to do aside from hunker down indoors and drink, so after its few days off in the brutal heat, Lost Country’s nights boomed again, not that Arthur went to visit in his off hours. 

Hosea’d been pretty happy with Arthur over the past few weeks--seemed to think that Charles was a good, steadying influence on Arthur--but he still hadn’t relented and let Arthur go back to bouncing in the evenings, so Arthur used his nights off to keep up around the house and with the horses, though Reliance was taken off his hands for the rest of the summer for some ranch work upstate.

All in all, it was a pretty good few weeks, despite the fact that Arthur kept waking up in the middle of the night reaching for the warmth of another body. Arthur could even almost sort of stand to be in the same room as John for a little while, so long as John managed to keep his mouth shut. The fool didn't seem to know what to do with the unexpected ceasefire, so mostly stayed quiet and out of Arthur's way. It was good. Nice. Peaceful, which Arthur was slowly starting to realize was rare and valuable. 

_God, we all got old an' boring,_ he thought. _When did I start wanting peace an' quiet instead'a noise an' mayhem?_

Advancing decrepitude or not, Arthur'd take all of the peaceful days he could get. He liked it, the peace. It was nice. 

So, of course, Micah had to fuck it all up two nights before Charles was due back in by getting arrested over in Strawberry. 

“How d’you even get into a bar fight in a dry county?” Arthur growled, when Dutch and Hosea pulled him aside near the end of his shift and told him he'd be going over to West Elizabeth to bail Micah's stupid ass out. Dutch didn't like leaving folks in jail cells for longer than he had to. 

“Where there’s a will,” said Hosea darkly, but Dutch waved them both aside, light and unbothered.

“I’m sure Micah will tell us all about it when he gets back,” said Dutch, eyes turning up. He had the nerve to be _fond_ of Micah, like Micah was a puppy who'd just pissed on a rug or something and not a grown man with no sense who'd put them all at risk by getting pinched in West Elizabeth. Arthur's jaw tightened. “It’s not like _you’ve_ never been in a bar fight, Arthur.” 

Hosea grunted at the reminder. He hadn’t been too pleased about the mess behind Lost Country that Arthur and Charles had left the night crew to sort out. Apparently the cops had still been out back when Hosea’d come in to open in the morning, trying to find out who’d beaten the shit out of six rough rodeo men. 

Hosea hated cops. He was politer about it than Dutch, who _had_ been arrested for running his mouth off a time or two, but Hosea still hated them, and hated having them come sniffing around the shop for any reason, legitimate or otherwise. 

Arthur grimaced at the old man apologetically. _Come to think of it, brawlin’ behind the bar’s prob’ly why he ain’t let me off the mornin’ shift._

“I know better’n to go kickin’ up a fuss in a place like Strawberry,” Arthur retorted, folding his arms across his chest. “That town’s always been stuck up. The likes of us ain’t never been too welcome there.” 

Dutch shrugged. “And now Micah knows to avoid it.” 

“‘Nother few days in the county jail might help him realize that,” Arthur said. “Micah don’t learn his lesson, Dutch. He's been here, what? A year? More?”

Dutch shrugged again. Arthur didn’t understand why Dutch was so unbothered by this. 

“He ought’a know how this shit works by now,” Arthur urged. “He cain’t go runnin’ around gettin’ himself pinched like this. It ain’t good for us.”

“It does bring attention down on the rest of us, Dutch,” Hosea pointed out, mouth pursed sourly. “Attention we don’t need, not if we’re running all over the goddamn place in New Hanover and Lemoyne.” 

Dutch scowled. _That_ certainly pierced the little bubble of cheerful disinterest Dutch had wrapped himself up in. “I thought I asked you to trust me on that, Hosea,” Dutch said. “I told you, it’s gonna be fine, you just need to have a little _patience_ \--”

“Patience,” started Hosea, hotly, but Arthur growled under his breath and put himself bodily between the two, drawing their attention back to the matter at hand. His own thoughts on Dutch’s dreams of expansion were irrelevant. His thoughts on Micah, on the other hand, needed to be heard. Arthur wasn't a feller known for his ability to plan, but he _was_ Dutch's eyes and ears on the ground, among the rest of their crew, and Arthur'd become a decent judge of folk over the years. 

“Micah’s a liability,” Arthur said, bluntly. “We’ve told him an' told him how things work ‘round here, Dutch, an' he ain’t wanna listen. That’s fine, he’s a grown man an' you ain’t his daddy, but at some point, you gotta draw the line. Micah’s a danger, to himself an' to all of us. To everythin' we've got here that we built for ourselves.” 

“He’s loud, hotheaded, rude,” Hosea added, bolstering Arthur’s argument. “Willfulness and determination are their own thing, Dutch, but Micah doesn't have any _sense._ ” 

“I didn’t, when you fell in with me,” Dutch pointed out, raising his eyebrows at Hosea, imploring. “And _you_ didn’t, Arthur, not when we found you.” 

Arthur held his tongue. Dutch had him there, though Arthur thought that there was a pretty big difference between being a fourteen-year-old with no sense and being a grown man with none. Fourteen-year-olds were stupid. Hell, twenty-year-olds were stupid. Stupidity and a lack of common sense were the rights of the young. 

But Micah was at least Arthur’s age, maybe a year or two behind. He'd only joined up with the crew because he'd heard the stories and thought himself a bad, hard man, but the bad, hard days were over and done with. There was no place for Micah at Lost County if he couldn't realize that, none, expect the one Dutch was insistent on carving out for Micah, hacking at the rest of them to make room. 

“We don’t leave anybody behind,” Dutch said, firmly. His dark eyes flashed and his chin came up, stubborn. He wouldn't be moved, not on this. His tone broked no argument, not from Arthur and not from Hosea. Dutch gave each of them a stern look. “I know Micah’s… well, rough around the edges,” Dutch said. Arthur curled his lip. 

“ _But,_ ” Dutch continued, flashing him an even sterner look than before, “that don’t mean that’s _all_ he is. We’ve all got our problems.” Dutch spread his hands. “Micah’s got a good heart in him, Arthur, I know he does. Deep down, deeper than you, maybe, but that's no reason to turn our backs on him when he needs us. And we don’t leave anybody behind.” 

Arthur groaned, but gave in. He could see that there’d be no winning this, not with Dutch so dead-set on bailing Micah out. And Dutch was half-right, anyway. Micah could walk away of his own free will, could wash his hands of all of them and get gone, but as long as he didn't, he was one of them. They didn't leave anybody behind. 

“Fine,” Arthur growled. “I’ll go get him, then. But I ain’t puttin’ up his bail money.” 

Dutch rolled his eyes but took Arthur’s surrender gracefully enough. He would've known that he was going to win the argument before it even started, but sometimes Dutch just liked to argue for the sake of arguing. Arthur still had enough leftover affection from the fun they'd had out in the desert that he let Dutch get away with it. “Gimme a sec, let me dig up some cash from the emergency fund.” 

“There even anything left in it?” Hosea muttered. Arthur grimaced--he really did doubt it, given the expenses they'd been accruing lately. Dutch ignored him and turned around, disappearing into his office for a minute. 

Arthur and Hosea shared sour glances. 

“Be careful,” said Hosea, lowly. “I don’t like this, Arthur. I don’t like this at all.” 

“Yeah, no shit,” Arthur hissed back. 

Dutch emerged from his office holding a roll of cash as thick around as a fist. Arthur whistled. 

“Emergency stash and then a bit of my own,” Dutch explained, handing over the roll of bills. “Tell Micah he owes me. And you too, for goin’ to get him.” 

“Oh, believe me, he’s gonna catch a goddamn earful,” Arthur said. He shoved the roll of bills into his pocket and glared at Dutch, hard. “I’m takin’ the weekend off. Micah can cover my goddamn deliveries.” 

Dutch put his hands up and smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Now go on. Be careful, and don’t hit Micah too hard for the inconvenience.” 

Ill-tempered and ready to beat somebody bloody, Arthur grunted a vague agreement and left. 

_Dumbass hillbilly motherfucker,_ he thought, stomping across the parking lot to his bike. If Micah didn’t have his own bike down in Strawberry, Arthur was going to just leave him there. Micah could get a bus or a taxi or walk back to Valentine for all Arthur cared. Arthur wasn’t going to let Micah fold up on the back of his bike. 

He hit the road beneath a humid, sullen grey sky. There was more rain on the wind and the air was as thick as soup, sweat beading up underneath Arthur’s collar before the wind could wick it away. 

Arthur had never been to the Big Valley County Jail, quartered out of Strawberry, but Strawberry wasn’t a big town. Arthur rumbled in just as a fine drizzle began to mist over the kitschy log buildings and faded storefronts, searching for any sign. Strawberry had four roads as opposed to Valenine’s two, and Arthur finally found the jail towards the back of the town, sheltered underneath tall pines and tucked beneath the first shadows of Mount Shahn. 

Micah’s bike was chained out front, wrapped in padlocks and a dusty yellow boot. There was a handful of parking tickets stuffed under one of the grips on the bars. 

_Joy,_ thought Arthur. He wasn't gonna pay those for Micah neither. If Micah wanted his bike back, he could take it up with Big Valley County. 

Arthur parked across the street, patted his pocket to make sure he hadn’t scattered a few grand all across the highway heading over, and stopped to smoke before he ducked inside. Whenever Arthur walked into a jail, he was half-convinced he'd never walk out. Strawberry's jail was a few storeys tall and the first floor was all administrative, decked out like a nineteenth-century hunting lodge, the solitary desk manned by a sad-looking man in county browns and a droopy mustache, who was poking an an ancient typewriter with just his index fingers, tongue held between his lips in tight concentration. 

The man didn’t stop what he was doing to see what Arthur wanted. Arthur cleared his throat. 

The deputy looked up, then looked Arthur up and down. “I help you?” he drawled, clearly unimpressed with what he'd seen. Cops and criminals had a strange sort of sixth sense for each other, and though Arthur was decades out from being a teenage arsonist with a bad attitude and a chip on his shoulder, sometimes he felt like all cops could still see the soot stains on his fingers. 

“Yeah, I’m lookin’ for a… co-worker’a mine,” Arthur drawled back, just as unimpressed. “He was prob’ly booked last night. Boxy-lookin’ feller, blond, got a mustache kinda like yours? Cain’t keep his mouth shut?” 

“Sounds like you’re here for Mister Bell,” the deputy said, eyes narrowing. 

Arthur bit back a groan. _An' he didn't even bother usin’ his goddamn back-up eye-dee,_ Arthur thought. _Great._

“Yeah, that’d be him,” said Arthur, false-bright. “'M here to pay his bail, I guess.” 

“His bail ain’t been set yet,” the deputy said smartly, head dropping back to his paperwork. “County judge does bail hearings on Fridays. It ain’t Friday.” 

Arthur sighed explosively. “Look,” he said. “Can I get him out on bond, then? I’’ll make sure he’s back ‘round for his hearin’ or whatever, but I--” Arthur reached for a lie and found nothing, so he told the deputy the truth. “I really ain’t wanna hafta cover his shifts for the next couple’a days. My, uh, sweetheart's comin' back into town an' I'd really rather not hafta go in 'cause Mister Bell had a bit too much to drink an' broke some noses.” 

The deputy eyed Arthur hard, trying to decide whether Arthur was trustworthy or not. Arthur did his best to stand up straight and look respectable, like he paid his taxes, didn’t start fights in bars, and was the kind of upstanding citizen a duly-sworn officer of the law could entrust a delinquent like Micah to. He surreptitiously tucked his fingertips inward, just in case the deputy could see phantom soot. 

“County bond’s two thousand, minimum,” the deputy finally said, apparently either deciding that Arthur was trustworthy after all or that he just didn’t give a shit. “And I’ll need ya to sign for him, so we know where to look if he goes missing between now and Friday.”

“Sure,” Arthur said, stretching the word out between his teeth. He fished Dutch’s money from his pocket and counted out two grand, then signed the paperwork the deputy shoved in front of him, a document claiming responsibility for Micah, another acknowledging that the two grand was non-refundable, another detailing some shit Arthur didn’t care about.

Arthur signed--not with his real name, because he wasn't a complete dumbass like Micah--and parted with the money. 

The deputy counted it all, signed his own name a few times, then stood. “Wait here,” he said. 

Arthur nodded. 

The deputy disappeared down a set of stairs-- _they keep folks in the basement,_ Arthur thought, _how eighteen-ninety_ \--and reappeared five or so minutes later with Micah under his hand. 

“Arthur!” Micah crowed, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face. “Good to see you!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Arthur grunted. Micah’s hands were cuffed in front of him and he certainly looked like he’d spent the night brawling and lounging around a jail cell. He stank, too, like piss and sweat and liquor, and there was dried blood in his straw-blond hair, red at the corners of his mustache. 

_Christ, I wish I could leave him here._

Scowling darkly, Arthur waited impatiently while the deputy uncuffed Micah and recited the date and time of his bail hearing, threatening various and sundry legal repercussions should Micah fail to appear.

“He’ll be there, Officer, I promise,” Arthur said, false as fool’s gold. “I’ll, uh, make sure of it m’self. Bring him back an’ everythin’.” 

“See that you do, Mister Callahan,” the deputy said, puffed up with his own self-importance. “Your name’s on these papers too, not just Mister Bell’s.”

“Yessir, we’ll be there,” Arthur said. He grabbed Micah’s elbow before Micah could skitter off and get himself into even more trouble. “You have a good day now.”

“Mister,” said the deputy, tipping his hat. 

Arthur didn’t do the same, but he did manage to hold off shouting at Micah until they were out of the jailhouse. 

“Aw, sweetheart, didja miss me?” Micah asked, trying to wriggle out of Arthur’s grip. Arthur didn’t let go, digging his fingers in hard enough to bruise. Micah wasn’t a small man, not really, but he was a few inches shorter than Arthur and Micah’s strength came mostly from lifting beer kegs and hitting folk. 

Arthur’s strength came from work, hard work, and Micah couldn’t pry him off or break his grip no matter how much he wriggled, cursed and tugged. 

Arthur held onto him until they were tucked behind a house, well out of earshot, then he spun Micah around and shoved him, face-first, into the wall and pinned him there with one hand on the back of his neck and the other twisting Micah’s arm behind his back. 

“ _Ouch,_ Arthur, Jesus,” Micah snapped. “Let me go, damnit!” 

“I don’t think I will,” drawled Arthur, furious. “You stupid piece'a shit, what did you _do?_ ”

“Nothin’, Jesus!” Micah said. Arthur pushed him harder into the wall. Maybe he'd get lucky and Micah would stick there, end up as somebody else's goddamn problem. “Okay, okay, it weren’t no big deal, just got into a little dust-up with some fellers I used to know, that’s all! We got to drinkin’, one thing led to another, then before I knew it there were teeth on the ground--”

“This is a dry county,” Arthur hissed. “How the hell you get around t’drinkin’ down here, huh?”

“General store owner has a moonshine still underneath his shop,” Micah said, like it was obvious. “Everybody knows about it, ‘cept the deputies I guess. And it wasn’t a big deal, really, we was just havin’ fun--” 

“So much fun you got your stupid ass arrested.” 

“Oh, like you’ve never been pinched!” 

“I ain’t been,” Arthur said. And he hadn’t. Not as a grown man, anyway. He’d been picked up a time or two as a kid. Dutch and Hosea had taught him better. Once a man started doing time, hard time, his options for living a free life dwindled down to spit and kindling. For somebody like Arthur, who’d quit going to school in the sixth grade, if he ever went to prison and had that kind of shit attached to his name, he’d never find decent work. He’d lose everything. His only options would be shit work or leg-breaking, and he'd end up in prison again, and that was a death sentence in and of itself. 

_Micah oughta know that too,_ Arthur thought. _Livin’ wild like this is only gonna get him--or worse, one of us--killed._

“You owe Dutch two fuckin’ grand,” Arthur snarled, finally letting Micah go. “An’ you owe _me_ too. I cain’t believe you. Usin’ your own goddamn _name?_ ”

“I didn’t use _my_ name,” Micah said, straightening his grimy jacket and brushing dirt out of his mustache. “I used my brother’s. Had his eye-dee on me, so I didn't have much choice, but it ain't so bad--” 

“That’s jus' about as bad,” snarled Arthur. “What’re you gonna do when your _brother_ ain’t show up for the bail hearing? You're on Hosea's books as Micah fuckin' Bell. They'll come lookin' for David or Danny or whoever the fuck, an' find _you_ instead.” 

“Spin some sad story about my brother runnin’ off on us and leavin’ us flat, of course,” Micah said. He rolled his eyes. “You worry too much, Morgan. It’s gonna be fine. I’ll get Dutch his money back and stay outta Strawberry for a while. I got some savings, I can probably even make that doughnut chaser back there lose my arrest paperwork.” 

“You fuckin’ better,” Arthur said. He didn’t believe a goddamn word that Micah was saying--what did consequences matter to Micah? But at least now when shit blew up, Arthur could raise his hands and say, honestly, that he'd warned Micah beforehand. “Jesus Christ.” 

“You gotta lighten up, brother,” Micah advised, clapping a hand down on Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur rolled him off and shot him a poisonous look that dared Micah to try it again. Micah pulled his hands away, grinning. “Relax,” he said. “I got somethin’ good for the old man. It’ll cheer even you up, Morgan.

Arthur narrowed his eyes, immediately suspicious. “I ain’t want any part of it,” he said. 

“C’mon, ain’t you even gonna hear me out?”

“No,” said Arthur flatly. “I ain’t even wanna see your face right now. Git gone. An’ make sure you don’t show up to the bar without the money you owe Dutch, y’hear?”

“Don’t be that way, Arthur,” Micah cajoled. "You’ll like it, I promise. Should bring in a good bit of money and be a lotta fun in the getting besides.”

“No.” Arthur rolled his shoulders, turned his back on Micah and loped off, back to his bike. He still had a few hundred bucks in his pocket and could probably offer to get Micah a ride home, but Arthur wasn’t feeling particularly charitable at the moment. 

“If you frown any harder, your face is gonna stick like that!” 

Arthur didn’t even bother turning around to give Micah the finger. It just wasn’t worth it, and besides, now Arthur was working against the clock, apparently trying to race Micah back to Lost Country and have his feelings on whatever dumbass idea Micah's concocted in that cell heard before Micah could get back and light a fire under Dutch about it. 

He swung a leg back over his bike, sour and getting sourer by the minute. 

_Jesus Christ,_ he thought, backing out of Strawberry and making for the road again. _Is it too much to ask for one quiet week?_

\---

Arthur should’ve known better than to tempt God like that. He wasn’t a religious man, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he’d spent enough time around superstitious folk, particularly Hosea, to have picked up a few superstitions of his own. 

One of those superstitions happened to be that if a man reached out to the universe to ask for something and the universe turned right around and backhanded the man silly, well. That was what folks called a Sign, and it wasn't a good one. 

No sooner had Arthur wished for an easy, quiet week than he got back to Lost Country and found that his loaned-out horse, Reliance, had developed laminitis in her back left hoof and was too sick to keep working the summer herds up in Colter. Laminitis wasn't a joke--a horse who couldn't shake it foundered or went lame, got gangrene, got laminitis in the other hooves and had to be put down. Lia was young yet, only ten or twelve by the vet's best reckoning--she still had fifteen or twenty years ahead of her. Arthur loved that horse. He didn't want to have to hold her while she died. 

Arthur borrowed Hosea’s trailer and rushed north to get Reliance, only to find that the roads going up into the western Ambarino mountains were either flooded out or made impassable by thick bands of sticking mud. Arthur might've been able to skirt the mess on his bike, but he couldn't get the truck and the trailer through it. Arthur had to call the rancher who’d loaned her out from a pay phone in Wallace Station and arrange for Reliance to be cared for there at the ranch until Arthur could reach her. The rancher, a good enough sort, agreed, though he sounded fairly confident she'd founder before Arthur could make it up there, which made Arthur grind his teeth the entire way back to his house. 

Back home Arthur found that the rain had swollen his fields and collapsed part of the paddock fence. Most of the horses hadn’t bothered making a break for it, content as they were with their regular feedings and regular brushings-out, but Buell had seen freedom through that hole in the fence and had made a run for it through the mud. Tracking the wily old bastard down took another four hours on horseback, Blue complaining the entire time, and then Buell had to be lassoed up and hauled back through the mud, protesting furiously. 

By the time Arthur washed the mud off and remembered that he needed to warn Dutch about Micah’s harebrained scheme, whatever it was, it was near full-dark and Arthur knew he was too late before Dutch even picked up the phone in his office back at the shop. 

“Lost Country, Ell-Ell-Cee,” said Dutch, his voice tinny and odd through Arthur’s old phone. He sounded cheerful, but that could mean anything. A busy night, a good fuck, a nice glass of whiskey. 

A new business opportunity, brought to him by Arthur's least-favorite coworker. 

“Micah make it back yet?” Arthur asked.

“Yeah, he got back in a few hours ago,” Dutch said. “Listen, Arthur, thanks for goin’ to get him. He promised me he’d make it up to you. Says he’s got this idea goin’, something about moonshine. Sounds real profitable, if we play it right--”

Arthur groaned and hung up the phone. He didn’t want to hear about Micah’s plans or what Dutch wanted to do with those plans, and he knew it was too late to turn Dutch aside from the idea. Dutch was all about quick, easy ways to make some money.

A headache was building behind Arthur’s eyes, sharp and insistent. He dug his palms into his eyes and groaned again. 

The rancher had offered to put Lia down. Laminitis wasn’t easy to shake, especially not in a working horse like Reliance. She didn’t like to sit still in her paddock and stall rest just frustrated her. 

“Let’s wait a bit,” Arthur had said, even as he’d begun to doubt that Reliance would make a quick recovery, sadness beginning to gnaw at his heart. “Give her a few weeks. I’ll come get her when I can.” 

_At this rate, I’m gonna need whatever stupid fuckin’ side job Micah wants to pick up,_ Arthur thought. He had some money saved up, it was true--more than most of the other boys--but if Lia took months to recover, or if she got worse, if she foundered or the laminitis led to colic or lameness, well. Arthur didn't give up on his horses, but livestock vets weren’t cheap. 

Arthur swore and dragged a hand through his hair. A pang shot through him. 

It had been like this the last time Arthur’d been happy with his lot in life. He hadn’t had any of the horses then, hadn’t had a house to mind or a steady job, but he’d been _happy_ with his life, with his stolen weekends at Eliza’s place playing with Isaac and his days running around with Dutch and the others, going wherever the wind and the highway had taken them. 

It had all fallen apart back then in a big way, starting with that crime scene tape wrapped around Eliza's apartment door, with the worn-eared stuffed horse tucked into a child's grave. 

Arthur wasn’t sure he wanted to go through all that again. Wasn’t sure he _could,_ if he was being honest. He’d barely made it out the first time with his sanity and his life intact, after all the fighting and shit he’d done while his fury and grief had still been new and raw. There’d been a couple of nights where he’d blacked out on the floor of some sticky, shitty dive bar somewhere and woken up the next morning, covered in blood and spilled beer, concussed and confused and dimly, distantly surprised to still be alive. Disappointed, in a sideways sort of way. 

_Stop it, Morgan,_ Arthur told himself, trying to bodily wrench his thoughts away from that particular dark corner of his past. _A lame horse ain’t a dead kid. You’re seein’ omens in your coffee grounds when there’s nothin’ but beans._

Still, Reliance going lame felt like an omen. Felt like bad news ahead of worse, like a drought coming before a wildfire. 

_Stop,_ Arthur repeated to himself. _It’s all gonna be alright. We ain’t livin’ now like we were before. We got savings, we got a life here that we’ve sunk our blood and our sweat into. It ain’t all gonna come down on us. It ain’t._

_Hell,_ he thought. _If I say it a few more times, I might even come t’believe it, too._

\---

Reliance, true to her name, didn’t founder or die over the next few days. Arthur still wasn’t able to go up and get her, the roads to Colter, where the cattle drive was set to start, still closed with mud, but he heard from the rancher’s vet. The feller seemed to think that Lia would pull through alright, as long as she kept to her stall. 

Arthur was so busy trying to arrange her care and also tend to the rest of the horses that he completely forgot Charles was supposed to make it back in from his long haul that afternoon until he heard a car rattling up his driveway and turned around, arms full of hay, to see the Bonneville coming up the drive, bouncing and groaning as it rattled over the gravel. 

_Shit,_ Arthur thought, half alarmed and half delighted, his heart and his body lifting at the sight even as his mind stuttered to a crashing halt. _Oh, shit, we’re s’posed to go camping._

Arthur hastily dumped his hay over the edge of the paddock fence, not caring which of the horses got to it first, and loped over to Charles, who had parked in front of the house and was just climbing out of his car, stiff and strange. There was an odd, inscrutable look on his face, and an air that hung about him like a thundercloud, dense and crackling. 

Arthur paused a few feet back. 

He’d seen Charles look rough and road-worn before. The first time he’d ever met Charles, Charles had been raw and tired. Faded, almost, like somebody already half out of the world.

But the man stepping out of his battered blue car was even more worn, even more ragged and frayed around the edges. 

Charles looked like he hadn’t slept the whole time he’d been away. There were heavy black bruises pressed in deep underneath both his eyes and his lips were pale and pressed thin. His hair was loose and lank, shoved under an oil-splattered ball cap, and his clothes hung limp around his frame. 

“Charles,” Arthur said, giving the man enough space to get his bearings. He watched the other man, wary and tense and not entirely sure why. 

Charles blinked at him, blearily. Arthur frowned. 

“Arthur,” Charles finally said. He looked around and blinked again, then shook himself. Some of his usual sharp wit flickered back into his eyes. “Uh. Hi.” 

“Hi,” Arthur said, still hanging back. “Are you, uh. You alright?” 

“Yeah,” Charles said, shaking his head again, offering up a crooked smile. “I’m alright. Tired. It’s good to see you.” 

“”S good t’see you, too” Arthur admitted, struggling to hide just how much he meant it. Even with Charles as worn out and distant as this, it was good to see him. Arthur felt like he’d found steadier ground all of a sudden, like he’d been walking on a trembling fault line and had just now stepped back onto even earth. He pushed himself past his wariness and drew closer, helplessly, like a moth drawn to a flame. “Long haul, huh?”

“You could say that,” said Charles darkly. He looked down at himself, the dirt, the oil stains, and grimaced. “Can I, uh. Borrow your shower?” 

“‘Course,” said Arthur. “Door’s open. Uh, g’wan in. I’ll finish up out here an’ get to packin’. You hungry?” 

Charles shook his head. “Just tired.” He looked fairly apologetic about it, underneath the exhaustion and grime. 

“Make yourself at home, then,” Arthur said, waving him off. “You know where shit is. I’ll be in soon. Gotta finish up out here.” 

Charles nodded and trudged inside. Even his steps were heavier than usual, unsteady, some of Charles’s normal, effortless grace unbalanced. Arthur watched him to make sure he made in inside alright and went about the rest of his chores as fast as he could. 

He threw together the beginnings of a camping bag too, a few dusty old sleeping rolls, his tent, cooking gear, some easy food that would taste fine straight from the can or over a fire. 

By the time he was finished, the shower’d shut off. The bed groaned loud enough to be heard from the kitchen, springs creaking. 

Concerned, Arthur went to go take a look. Charles was sitting there on the edge of Arthur’s bed, wrapped in a towel, and his eyes were a hundred years away, lost back somewhere in the past. 

_It's ain't just the road that's botherin' him,_ Arthur thought, watching. He knew that look in Charles's eyes. He'd seen it in his own eyes before, shining wild in the mirror. _It's somethin' else. Somethin' older._ _Deeper._

“Charles,” Arthur said, uncertain again. He wasn't very good at offering comfort. Arthur could bind up a cut on a horse's leg or brush the burrs out of a dog's fur, but this, whatever was gnawing at Charles, was different. Arthur didn't know how to deal with it. He'd never been good with people. Arthur cleared his throat, determined to soldier through. “You sure you’re alright? We can--we ain’t have to go tomorrow, ‘f you don’t want. We can stay here an’ rest.” 

Charles blinked. “No,” he said. “I want to go. I’m just--tired. I’m really tired.” 

“Can I help?” 

Charles looked at Arthur for a moment. The road was yawning behind his eyes, dark and lonely. Whatever was chewing at him was there too, twisting in the depths of his eyes like a snake. 

Still, Arthur wanted to help, even if Charles wasn’t sure he knew what he needed. 

“C’mere,” Arthur said decisively, shucking his boots off and flopping down in bed next to Charles. Charles looked at him, brow furrowed. 

“C’mere,” Arthur invited again, stretching out so he was lying down on his back. Eliza had done this for him a few times, when he’d been too tired to be good company for Isaac. “‘S alright. Jus’ lie down a minute. The both of us. It’ll do ya good.” 

“Alright,” said Charles warily, in the same tone of voice he’d used the first time he’d met Arthur, like he was still trying to decide whether or not Arthur was insane. 

He did as he was asked, though. He lay down beside Arthur, their bodies touching, heat pooling between them. He'd managed to get part of Arthur's arm stuck beneath him, Arthur's arm already going numb beneath the elbow, but Arthur didn't complain. 

“Jus’ close your eyes for a minute or two,” Arthur murmured. “Jus’ rest.” 

“It’s only four,” Charles argued weakly, but Arthur could hear the sleep burring his voice, the plain, bone-deep exhaustion. 

“Jus’ close your eyes,” Arthur murmured, breathing slowly and deeply with intent, trying to force his own wheeling thoughts to settle. “Jus’ for a minute.” 

Charles hummed, deep and ragged. He didn't argue. Arthur breathed with him for a moment or two, slow and steady. Within minutes, Charles was asleep. 

Arthur smiled to himself. 

_This week’s been kind of shit,_ he thought to himself, pins and needles shooting up his arm where Charles had pinned it to the bed beneath his bulk. _But this, at least, ain’t too bad._

\---

“All ready?” Charles asked, saddlebag slung over his shoulder. A good night’s sleep had done him well. The dark shadows pressed beneath his eyes had eased overnight and his expression was easy, light. Whatever demon he'd been wrestling had fallen still for the time being, and let the man Arthur had grown so fond of fight his way back to the surface. 

“More’r less,” Arthur drawled, surveying his own packed bags. He’d packed his tent, despite Charles thinking they wouldn’t need it. A week was a long time to trust that the weather would hold, and Arthur was too old to be sleeping out in the rain. 

Arthur looked at Charles sidelong. He really did look better, steady on his feet again and not quite so drawn, stretched out thin over his bones, but Arthur wasn’t sure how far or rough a ride Charles was up to today. 

“Breakfast?” Arthur asked. Charles nodded, so Arthur paused his packing to get some bread in the toaster and some coffee on the pot, a side of bacon sizzling on the stove. They ate together in a companionable quiet, then Arthur left Charles nursing a second cup of coffee--this one with more milk than coffee, to make up for the lack of sugar in Arthur’s house--to head out and wrangle the horses. 

Arthur was going to take Blue again, but Charles was taking Cloudrunner. Magnolia was a good trail horse for a day or two but Arthur worried over her hooves when she was out and about for more than a few days, and with Reliance already flirting with a founder Arthur didn’t want to put any of the others at risk. If he had any more vet bills than just Reliance's, he would have to join Micah's harebrained scheme just to keep the lights on. 

He strode out into the field with a whistle, waiting for his horses to emerge from the fog that had come in overnight, clinging to the barn and the fields and the mountain’s flanks with chilly grey fingers. 

Summer didn’t last long in Ambarino. The rest of July would see more heat, August a bit as well, but by September the nights would be cold again, not just chilled, and by October the snow would come back and plunge the Grizzles once again into winter. 

The cool air now would make for an easy start to their morning, though. Arthur whistled again, high and calling, and one by one his horses came through the mist to cluster by the fence, tossing their heads and calling back, whinnying and stamping. 

By the time Charles joined Arthur outside, all their bags slung over his broad shoulders, Arthur’d mostly gotten everybody fed and he’d pulled Cloudrunner and Blue aside, tying them off by the barn. 

By now, the work of brushing down and tacking up the horses side by side was familiar and practiced. Arthur thrilled at the easy intimacy of it, the awareness of Charles’s body in relation to his own, the certainty that they wouldn’t get in each other’s way or slow each other down. 

“Set?” Arthur asked some time later, once Blue and Cloudrunner were saddled up and ready, both horses pawing at the ground in anticipation. The sun had come fully up and was starting to burn off the mists. They had a beautiful day ahead of them, Arthur could tell. 

“Set,” Charles said, tugging on Cloudrunner’s girth experimentally, making sure she was comfortable but not so loose she’d let Charles slip and roll halfway up a mountain. 

Arthur grinned and shaded his eyes. “Good,” he said. “When you’re ready, then.” 

Charles vaulted up on Cloudrunner’s tall back effortlessly, then quirked an eyebrow as he got himself settled in the saddle. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Show off,” he said, good-naturedly, and hopped up on Blue. He wasn’t half as graceful as Charles had been at it, but Arthur didn’t mind. Blue snorted and tossed his head, tasting wind. He wanted to run. 

“How’re you feelin’?” Arthur asked, nudging Blue towards the fence, keeping control over the gelding’s head. “Better’n yesterday?” 

Charles smiled tiredly. “Better, yeah,” he said. He grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck, uncharacteristically apologetic. “Listen, I’m… sorry, about last night. I usually try and stay away from people when I get like that.” 

Arthur waved it off. “I’m mean as hell, most of the time,” he said. “You had a long few weeks, sounded like. I ain’t mind that you’ve got a bit’a bite to ya. ‘S kinda a relief, to be honest. For a bit there I was startin’ to think you were perfect.” 

The clumsy flirtation made Charles’s smile a bit more genuine. “Still,” said Charles. “It’s not your fault my last couple of weeks have been shitty. I wanted to be past it before I came over, but, well.”

“Don’ worry ‘bout it,” Arthur insisted, firmly. “You’re gonna see me in a temper a time or two, ‘f you decide you wanna stick around. I ain’t delicate. You ain’t hurt my feelin’s or nothin’.” 

Arthur slid down to open the gate, ushering Charles through and passing him Blue’s reins to keep the fool horse from running off, then latched it behind him and clamored back onto Blue’s back. 

He and Charles fell into an easy canter heading north, crossing the edge of Arthur’s property and hitting BLM land a few paces beyond. 

“Sleep did me some good,” Charles said, once they’d fallen into a loping rhythm and had gotten past the threat of being sideswiped by anybody barreling down the road. “And your coffee.” 

Arthur chuckled. “Had enough caramel sauce for your likin’?”

“Shut up,” said Charles, eyes laughing. Arthur did as asked, finally giving Blue his head a bit and letting him set the pace. Blue galloped for a minute or two, then realized that he was hauling a lot of shit, not just Arthur’s blocky ass, and slowed back to a quick, gaited canter that had him rolling across the fields smooth as whiskey. 

Cloudrunner’s gait wasn’t quite as smooth and easy but Charles didn’t seem to mind, his hips rolling in concert with Cloud’s beating hooves, his seat perfect and his thighs strong around her barrel. 

_There’s prob’ly somethin’ wrong with me, that watchin’ a feller ride a horse gets me goin’,_ Arthur thought, but at this point he was fairly sure that watching Charles do anything--cooking, brawling, drinking a cup of caramel sauce disguised as coffee--would get him going. 

_It’s that Charles takes the time to do everythin’ carefully._ Arthur’d always liked competence, whether it had been Mary’s skilled handling of Arthur’s wild habits or the ease with which Eliza had worked a bar floor, Albert’s studied patience behind a camera or Hamish’s strong, deft hands tying a lure or skinning a deer. 

Care and skill spoke well of a person, Arthur thought. He himself didn’t have too many good qualities but Arthur liked to think that he was careful with the things that mattered--his bike, his horses, a cup of coffee made for a friend. 

Dutch and Hosea had taught him that. 

Charles caught Arthur’s eyes, saw the want darkening Arthur’s cheeks, traveling red down his throat, and his own eyes went dark, a strange, hungry expression passing over his handsome face. 

Arthur saw a challenge there, and bared his teeth at it. 

“We’re stoppin’ for lunch at Donner Falls,” Arthur called, over the thundering of the horses’ hooves and his own pulse. “‘S a straight shot on this trail here, ‘bout five miles up. Bet I can beat ya.” 

Charles’s eyes were nearly black, a challenging smile spreading across his own face, his teeth very white. “What do I get when I win?” 

“Winner gets to decide once they’ve won,” said Arthur, airily. He didn't want to give away the game too early, but he was pretty sure he had Charles beat, here, and he was pretty sure he knew what he wanted to get when he won, too. “Get ready.” 

Charles did, settling deeper, heels down, chin up. His confidence was a heady thing thick in the air, strong enough to taste. Arthur's stomach tightened in anticipation. 

“On my mark,” Arthur said, fighting to keep his voice even. “I’ll count us down at that pine watchin’ the fork in the road, yeah?”

“Sure,” Charles agreed, his eyes flashing with excitement. 

“Get set,” Arthur called, and dug his heels into Blue's side a full twenty feet before they reached the pine tree. Blue went off like a buckskin bullet, leaving Charles hollering behind them. 

Arthur whooped, the wind nearly knocking him back, and took shameless advantage of his cheating. If he wanted to win he was going to have to cheat, and cheat mercilessly. Cloudrunner was _fast._ Thoroughbreds and standardbreds were both racing horses, but their racing was of a different kind. Cloudrunner had been bred to sprint, Blue to pace. Flat-out--and with as good a horseman on her back as Charles was--Cloudrunner would win, but Blue had the stamina, and Arthur had better knowledge of the trail. 

Despite the twenty-foot head start, Arthur saw brindled grey out of the corner of his eye. Cloudrunner was gaining on Blue. Charles’s hair was a river of black in the wind. 

Arthur let Charles gain on him, their horses running neck and neck. They couldn’t keep up this pace for five miles, neither of them, but the initial run was _good,_ pleasure and competition thrilling through Arthur’s chest. 

Charles caught Arthur’s eye as Cloudrunner started to edge ahead, her long, powerful legs eating up the trail, and winked. 

Arousal kicked Arthur in the chest like a wild horse. 

_Fair’s fair,_ Arthur thought, dazed with it, breath coming in short, but he held on and let Blue’s natural ornery streak work for him. Cloudrunner outpaced them easily, a length growing between Arthur and Charles, then another and another, until Cloudrunner whisked off down a bend in the trail and was lost. 

With Charles out of sight, Arthur’s grin turned wild. 

“C’mon, boy,” he murmured, bending low over Blue’s neck. “We got this.” 

Arthur knew the backcountry around these parts like the back of his hand. With as many horses as he had he’d gotten to know all of the trails and cuts up here real well, first with Buell to keep the bastard calm and then with all his other horses to teach them how to ride or be ridden, how to trust that Arthur wouldn’t run them off the edge of a cliff and that a bridle, that work, was a a good thing. 

He and Blue peeled off the main trail, picking a trickier track that went up a ridge and would cut nearly two miles off their run. Blue couldn’t gallop this trail, not with its sharp turns and its uneven, pockmarked surface, but Blue trusted Arthur enough to keep up a good pace. 

They went up and around and down again, the goat track spitting them back out onto the main trail. Arthur didn’t slow, keeping Blue at that steady, whiskey-smooth standardbred pace. If he listened hard, he could hear hoofbeats back down the trail behind him. 

Arthur grinned to himself. 

He didn’t push Blue any harder than he’d already done--Arthur knew this trail, and he knew Cloudrunner. She was a willing, hard-working horse, and she’d give Charles everything she had, but she was no distance racer. She wouldn’t be able to run any faster and keep up her pace. 

By the time the falls were in sight, Arthur’d let Blue slow enough that he heard Charles round the trail behind them and catch sight of them, realize that he’d been had. 

Charles shouted something rude, the exact nature of it lost in the wind, and Arthur laughed, and laughed, and kept on laughing as Blue crossed the bridge and rounded the falls, snorting and stamping, very aware and very pleased that he’d won. 

“I didn’t know we were allowed to cheat,” said Charles, letting Cloudrunner go down to a light trot. Her sides were gleaming with sweat and Charles patted her neck, letting the good old horse know she hadn’t lost the race through any fault of her own. Charles was smiling, though, so despite a few of the words Arthur’d caught floating on the wind, Charles wasn’t too mad about losing. 

Arthur took off his hat to pull his fingers through his hair, sweaty and flushed with triumph. 

“‘S always a risk with me, I’m afraid,” he said. “Part’n parcel’a bein’ raised by Hosea Matthews.” Arthur smiled at Charles winningly. “If your feelin’s’re hurt, though, I can make it up to ya.” 

“Yeah?” Charles put a hand over his heart, expression solemn. “I’m hurt, Arthur. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust you again.” 

“Then c’mere,” Arthur invited, sliding off Blue’s back and letting the horse wander down to the water to get a drink. “I got just the thing for ya.” 

Eyes alight, Charles did.

\---

After Arthur committed a few public indecencies on federal land, he and Charles gobbled down a few ham sandwiches, the ham now warm with sun, and washed them down with water before hitting the trail again, going north and further north. 

Arthur felt vaguely exposed, laid bare, like every thru-hiker and squirrel they passed on the trail could see right through him, could see how red Arthur’s mouth had gotten sucking Charles off by the waterfall, could see his hair mussed beneath his hat and the way his dick twitched in his jeans every time Arthur caught sight of the corner of Charles’s mouth, remembering how that mouth had felt around his own cock as Charles had returned the favor. 

Arthur’d had more uncomfortable trail rides, including one where Arthur’d had a handful of buckshot stuck in his leg courtesy of Hamish's overexcited trigger finger, but he couldn’t ever remember a trail ride where he’d had to stop every mile or so and shift his position so that he didn’t rub his dick raw on the inside of his jeans. 

Charles knew exactly what Arthur was doing, too, and wasn’t helping, the asshole. 

He’d wait until he felt Arthur’s eyes on him and then he’d do something stupid and attractive like flex his shoulders, back rippling beneath his shirt, or undo a button and let a sliver of his chest, shining with sweat, catch the sun. 

By the time Charles had resorted to wrapping one big hand around the pommel of his saddle, just holding it there--not gripping it or rubbing it or any of the other childish shit Arthur’d seen horny young men do when trying to impress their sweethearts, just holding the pommel, steady and sure and with a knowing, wicked glint in his eye--Arthur was hard enough to cut rocks and restless with it. Not even the motions of being on horseback were helping. All of that rocking, back and forth, was making Arthur even more of a stereotypical cowboy than usual. 

Despite Arthur’s mounting blue balls, the two of them managed to have fun as afternoon slid into evening and they began to scout the trail for a place to spend the night. They had a few more races, these few the type of short sprints that Charles, confident atop Cloudrunner, won easily. The horses kicked up clouds of dust and mud and startled birds into the air. 

Charles, keenly aware of just how much food they’d brought, unlatched a .22 from his saddle and brought down a couple of quail, which he slung across Cloudrunner’s rump. Arthur dismounted a time or two to pick up a few fistfuls of wild thyme and oregano, remembering Hamish’s field lessons. 

He picked a poppy too, the first one he saw, its cup as wide across as Arthur’s palm and its petals vibrant orange, the color of a long evening spent sprawled out on Arthur’s porch. 

When he gave it to Charles with the thyme and oregano Charles got that strange look on his face again, a kind of tenderness that split Arthur open at the bottom of his ribs, a look that was just as arousing, if not more, as the open collar of Charles’s shirt and Charles’s hand wrapped around the pommel of his saddle. 

By the time the sun had gone away behind the mountains, Arthur’d found a spot just beneath a flat, low-headed plateau. The highlands were another morning’s ride beyond, up and up past the scree of rock and tangled plants, but Arthur didn’t want to wait any longer. 

“Here?” he asked, turning to Charles, who was watching the sun set to the west, tongues of orange and purple fire staining the treetops below them. 

“Here’s good,” Charles agreed. He still had that strange look on his face and Arthur found that he couldn’t look at it head on. He dismounted and untacked Blue with quick, practiced motions, took Cloudrunner to rub her down while Charles loped off to scavenge up some firewood. 

Arthur held off while Charles got the fire going, while he unpacked their bags and fished out what they needed to make dinner. Ro-Tel, whiskey, quail, oregano, a few cans of beans. 

Arthur even held off until Charles had it all in the sturdy pot Arthur’d brought on half a hundred camping trips, a little thing he tucked in his saddlebags and always forgot to wash until the next time he wanted to go out and spend a night underneath the stars. 

“You’re gonna burn dinner,” Charles chided, as Arthur finally stopped holding off and went to him, hands out and hungry. 

“No’m not,” Arthur murmured back, fitting his hands against Charles’s hips, his thumbs tracing the cut of Charles’s pelvis. “Fire’s still cool yet. We got time.” 

That was all the talking they did for a while. Most of their time together had been urgent, fast. Beneath their chaotic schedules and their desire for each other, they hadn’t had much opportunity to go slow.

Arthur was in the mood for slow, tonight. He felt like taking his own good, sweet time. 

Charles was in a mood to let him. He sat back and let Arthur explore Charles’s body like this, in the half-light of late evening, let Arthur undo the rest of the buttons on his shirt one by one, let Arthur press his mouth to the salt of his collarbone, run his fingers down the muscle of Charles’s thighs. 

He did his own touching too, of course. For every piece of clothing Arthur took off of Charles, Charles took one of Arthur’s. Shirt first, so Charles could trace the tattoos he was so fascinated by, then Arthur’s boots, then his belt and his jeans and his boxers and his socks last of all, one and then the other, until they were both naked and open to each other, their kissing slow and sweet and flavored with whiskey. 

By the time they were able to take their hands off each other, dinner had burned, the beans blackened, the Ro-Tel gone oddly gummy, but sitting there wrapped in Charles’s shirt, smoking and passing around one tin mug of wild quail and another of whiskey, watching the sky together as the darkness gathered and the stars finally tipped over the Grizzlies and came spilling over the horizon, Arthur thought he’d never had a better meal. 

_This ain’t bad,_ he thought to himself, whiskey burning low and happy in his belly. _This ain’t bad at all._

Arthur sat back on his elbows, the tin cup of whiskey balanced on his stomach. He was happy and full and probably a little bit drunk. He had scratches on his back from Charles’s fingers. 

_I ain’t been this happy in a while,_ he thought. He’d probably never been this content in all his adult life, even with everything going on at the shop, with Reliance’s laminitis, with the grief that still gnawed at his heart in quiet moments off by himself. 

Sitting beside Charles while the stars glittered above them, the horses snuffling, the wind cooling the sweat off of Arthur’s body, all of that worry and grief was so distant Arthur could barely see it, like a shadow passing over the moon. 

_I could get used to this._

That was, of course, when Charles ruined it all by leaning in close enough that his breath tickled the fine hair at the back of Arthur’s neck and said, “You know, I think I love you.” 

Arthur spilled his whiskey. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: 
> 
> Micah. Improper representation of how the US bail/bond system works. Alcohol consumption. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!!


	7. lost country: vii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things! 
> 
> 1) This chapter is 19,000 words long. It is one whole fourth of the text I have written so far. I'm very sorry, and I also wish I wasn't doing what I'm doing. 
> 
> 2) Please check the content warnings for this chapter, if you are feeling at all unsure! There are some heavier themes in this one than in the other chapters.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

“I, uh,” Arthur said, staring at Charles. “I, uh. What?” His mouth had gone dry. The tin cup clattered to the ground and whiskey ran down Arthur’s belly. His ears were ringing like he’d been punched. 

Lit up by starlight, something soft in Charles’s face slipped. 

Charles sat up too. “Did I--Arthur,” said Charles, reaching out for him. Arthur shied away before he could stop himself. 

Charles froze. “Oh,” he said, and the word was very hollow.

“Charles, I--uh,” Arthur said, trying to unstick the words from his throat. “I’m--sorry,” he said. 

Charles looked at him. His expression crumbled for a moment before Charles hid it away, his face going smooth and blank and unreadable, as if Charles had suddenly and completely turned to stone. That bothered Arthur more than anything, the abrupt return of the distance Charles had worn like armor coming in from the road. After a day spent laughing and chasing each other around the heather like fools, Charles's sudden, walled-off expression cut Arthur to the bone. 

“That ain’t what I’m tryin’ to--no,” Arthur said. He groaned and threw himself down on his back, shoved his heels into the hollows of his eyes. Everything he’d ever wanted to say to Charles was caught buried in his throat, in his chest, sharp as slivers of swallowed glass. 

Charles stayed quiet and distant, like he'd gone to another country entirely. Like his hand had slipped from Arthur's while Arthur wasn't paying enough attention, and slipped away for good. 

“What I’m tryin’ to say,” Arthur began again, picking his words as carefully as he knew how, “is that I… well, I jus’ ain’t sure, I guess.” He didn’t look at Charles, afraid of what he might see there reflected in Charles’s dark eyes. 

“Not ‘cause I ain’t got--ain’t got affection for you, or anythin’ like that,” Arthur added. He tried to swallow and could barely manage it. “Bein’ with you’s been--” Arthur’s words stuck in his throat again, this time just behind his tongue, and he half-choked on them trying to get them out. His lips stung with them. 

“‘S been good,” said Arthur roughly. “‘S been real good, in a--in a time that ain’t been real good to me. It’s jus’. Well. I guess I ain’t ever been in love before, ‘s what I’m tryin’ to say. I ain’t sure how to _know,_ like you seem to.” 

“You’ve never been in love before.” Charles's tone was flat. 

Arthur shrugged without sitting up, his hands still pressed into his eyes. He _loved_ people, that was true and plain to see, even for an idiot like Arthur. He loved Hosea and he loved Dutch, he loved Tilly and Mary-Beth and Karen and Abigail, he loved Javier and Lenny, he even loved John fucking Marston. 

Arthur loved his horses and his dogs, his cats, his chickens, his goats. He loved his bike and his house and he loved the sun as it climbed up from the east and down to the west, the moon and her changing faces, the stars in all their brilliance. 

He’d loved Isaac. He’d loved Isaac. 

But that was different than the way Arthur felt about Charles.

Arthur took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to put his thoughts in order. 

“When I was nineteen,” Arthur said, still rough, “I bought myself a ring, ‘cause I was convinced that I was gonna marry this girl. Mary. Her name was Mary. She was--she was the first woman I ever looked at an’ wanted. Neither of us was grown, we was just kids, really, but ‘cause she was the first one and ‘cause she made me laugh I thought that what I felt for her was love.”

“Was it?” Charles asked. His voice was toneless, unreadable. Arthur still couldn’t look at him. 

“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “I never knew, never could decide. Used to drive Mary into hysterics. I think I… well. I know that I cared for her. It was puppy love, maybe. We were together ‘cause we thought that we were supposed t’be. It weren’t good for either of us, ‘specially by the end, but for a long time I thought it _had_ to be love, ‘cause--”

He stopped again, gritting his teeth. 

How could he explain it to Charles? He’d thought that Mary had loved him because she had put up with him, had suffered his moods and his inexperience and his many, many failures, because she’d stayed with him despite his temper and his snapping teeth and the fighting he’d done every other weekend, all the times he'd come to her with split knuckles and blood smeared across his mouth. 

With the way Arthur’d grown up, he’d felt like--like a wild animal, almost, up until Dutch and Hosea finally got it through his head that he wasn’t. Nobody’d wanted Arthur, not his father, not any of the dozen and more foster parents he’d been foisted off on, nobody. The good fosters had only wanted him up until he showed a little too much tooth, got in one too many fights at school, stole something, broke something. 

The rest had only wanted state money and the chance to take their own anger out on a kid not worth the bother of checking up on. 

Arthur’d been wild, that was true. He didn’t deny it. Even when his father’d been alive Arthur had been left to fend for himself most of the time. Being savage and fierce and unruly was the only way Arthur’d managed to feed himself, some days. He'd gotten by pinching food from the supermarket, shaking other kids down for their lunch money at school. 

Everybody’d told Arthur that he would end up just like his daddy, mean and solitary, fractious and strange, so Arthur, at ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen, had thought, _Why fight it?_

Better to be a rabid dog than a scared little kid. Better to snap and growl and look after himself than trust someone else to do it for him, only for that someone else to let him down. 

Mary’d put up with all that, so Arthur had thought it love. 

_But it hadn’t been,_ he realized. He knew that now. Arthur and Mary’s relationship had been a disastrous play, an act, a game. They’d been two people trying to force themselves together to meet what was expected of them, or maybe in defiance of what was expected of them. Arthur'd been trying to prove that he could be loved and Mary'd been trying to spit in her overbearing father's eye. 

But it hadn’t been love. 

Arthur hadn’t loved Eliza either. She hadn’t wanted him to and he’d wanted to respect her wishes. He probably could have grown to love her, given time. Eliza had been practical. Stubborn. She’d worked hard. She’d loved her son. She’d been the kind of woman Arthur could have fit his life around. 

She hadn’t wanted him to, though, so he hadn’t. His grief at her death had been the grief of losing a friend, of losing the mother of his child. It hadn’t compared to the bone-deep pain of losing Isaac, the cut of it, the rush of blood that had followed Isaac's grave to the surface. 

Albert was a friend. Rolling around with him had been easy, but there hadn't been any real attachment there. Hamish had just been a good time. 

“I don’t have anythin’ to compare it to,” Arthur said, trying to gather his thoughts and order them in a way that Charles could understand. “My pa sure as hell didn’t love my mama. She loved him, I think, but it weren’t good for her. Killed her, in the end. I was with Mary a while, but we were jus’ kids. We didn’t know what we were doin’, ‘side from pissin’ off her daddy.”

“There hasn’t been anyone else?” Charles asked, and there was a strange note, a pitying note, in his voice that put Arthur’s hackles up. 

“I ain’t know if you noticed,” he growled, falling back on old, safe habits, “but there ain’t exactly been a line’a suitors out my door that you had’a fight off to get to me. I ain’t no catch, Charles. An’ I don’t… I don’t want people, usually. ‘S a rare person I wanna get into bed with. Happens to me maybe once, twice a year, if that. I ain’t built for lovin’. ‘S not in my nature.” 

Charles snorted, unimpressed. Arthur didn’t mind. Derision was better than pity. Most anything was. 

“Good things ain’t meant to happen to bad people,” Arthur insisted. He finally worked up the nerve to sit up again, to peel his hands away from his eyes. Charles was sitting up too, though he hadn’t moved away. His eyes were large and dark in the moonlight, his hair mussed and soft. 

“I ain’t get to live the kinda life I’ve lived an’ have good things happen to me,” Arthur explained, as Charles’s eyes widened. “Fightin’, drinkin’, cursin’, prob’ly killin’--few fellers I’ve laid into over the years _must’ve_ died--all of that, done over an’ over without stoppin’ to think about what I was doin’. No, Charles.” 

“Who told you that?” Charles asked. 

Arthur stared at him. 

“I’m serious.” And he was, Arthur could see it in the stubborn set of Charles’s jaw. “Who told you that?” 

“I--well, nobody,” Arthur said, baffled. “”S jus’ the way it is.” He swept a hand out to encompass the mountains, the hills, the fields, the sky. “‘S the way of the world.” 

_Why else did my son die, if it weren’t to teach me that lesson?_ He didn’t say. 

“Bullshit,” said Charles. 

Arthur stared at him some more. 

Charles threw his hands up. “I’ve done bad shit too,” he said, meeting Arthur’s eyes, steady. Unflinching. “I haven’t only done good with my life. I’ve fought. I’ve killed, too. Some folks deserved it, maybe, but some of them were just in a bad place at a bad time. Does that mean I don’t deserve to live a good life now?”

“No!” Arthur said, vehemently. He reached out for Charles, hand brushing his knee. “No, ‘course not. You’re--you’re tryin’ to do good now, ain’t you?” 

“Trying to,” Charles agreed. “Aren’t you?” 

“I--what?” 

“Aren’t you? You rescue animals that no one else wants, Arthur. Hunting dogs that don’t hunt, racing horses that don’t race. You pick up shifts for your coworkers. You look after people. Aren’t you trying to do good too?”

“I--there’s no changin’ me, Charles,” Arthur tried to argue, weakly. He’d heard this argument before. Dutch and Hosea were fond of throwing it in his face whenever Arthur got too drunk or maudlin in front of them. They’d been trying to gently pound it into his head for the past twenty-two years. 

Arthur’s stomach twisted. He didn’t know how to feel, hearing Hosea’s words out of Charles’s mouth. Cornered, maybe. Seen, stripped down to the bone and left bare in the growling chill. 

“Bullshit,” said Charles. “And if you don’t wanna hear it from me, that’s fine. A man’s thoughts are his own. But _don’t_ use it as an excuse to tell me that you’re not sure if you love me or not, Arthur Van der Linde.” 

_He’s hurt,_ Arthur realized. Charles hid it well, anger lighting him up, masking the uncertainty, the instinctive flinch away from rejection, but he was hurting. 

_I did that._

Stomach twisted, nauseous and afraid, Arthur held up a hand. “Hold on,” he said, gruffly. He stood up, dripping whiskey, and padded over to his saddlebags. He rooted around for a minute before his fingers closed over the worn red leather of his journal. 

“Here,” he said, still gruff. Charles looked at it, then up at Arthur. “Take it,” Arthur insisted. “It ain’t gonna bite.” 

Dubious, still torn between anger and grief, Charles did as Arthur asked, taking the journal from his hand and opening it up in his lap. 

Arthur turned away, unable to watch Charles flip through it, to see what Arthur had written and drawn, the expressions he’d committed to paper, the memories. Charles on horseback, Charles feeding Magnolia, Charles asleep in the morning with a sheet twisted around his hips.

There were more than just sketches of Charles in there too, of course. Arthur sketched everything that he wanted to remember. Dutch and Hosea bickering over beer. Tilly and Mary-Beth picking tomatoes in Arthur’s garden. Buell rearing up on his hind legs, strong and stubborn, and the dogs dozing by Arthur’s old Adirondack. 

There were people in that journal, customers who’d come through Lost Country, folks Arthur’d met running deliveries. All of the horses were there in some combination or another. There were eagles Arthur had seen flying up above the mountain peaks, that big sixteen-point buck he’d seen out in the Heartlands. Hamish with his clever hands, Albert behind the camera, Isaac and Eliza as best as Arthur remembered them, even Mary. 

Charles was quiet for a long time. He was going through Arthur’s journal with that same intense, quiet focus with which he went through everything, Arthur knew. Charles wouldn’t say anything until he finished, until he’d learned what he’d set out to learn. 

Arthur did his best to clean himself off while he waited, wiping away spilled whiskey, scrubbing off dirt. 

Arthur’d said too much, and he hadn’t said enough. If his journal couldn’t make Charles understand--

Arthur shied away from that thought too, afraid of how much it would hurt. He’d let Charles go, of course he would, but it would hurt more than Arthur wanted it to. Charles deserved--more. Better. 

_Someone who knows what it feels like to be in love,_ he thought. It wasn’t Charles’s job to teach Arthur, to somehow make up for everyone else in Arthur’s life. Arthur was a grown man. The burden was his. 

Finally, Arthur heard Charles stir behind him, shut the journal, stand up to match Arthur’s height. 

Arthur could be a man about this, at least, even if he was struggling with the rest of it. He turned and met Charles’s eyes. His journal was closed, held loose in Charles’s hand. Charles’s eyes were very dark. 

“How long have you been working on this?” Charles asked. His voice had gone hoarse. 

Arthur licked his lips, wishing he hadn’t spilled the whiskey. “That one? ‘Bout a year, maybe a little less. I got more, at home. Been doin’ it since I was a kid. Hosea made me start.”

His mouth turned up at the memory, old and worn. Hosea pressing Arthur’s first journal, blue and battered with a cracked leather cover, into Arthur’s hands. 

“Write it down, boy,” he had said. “If you can’t say it, write it down. Or draw it, sketch it, whatever you want. Just don’t leave it all inside of you, Arthur. You've got so much in you, son. It's alright to let it out.” 

So Arthur had. He’d started with drawing. All of the things he’d seen and felt and wanted had been too difficult for Arthur to put into words so he’d sketched them instead, clumsy at first and then better and better the more he practiced. After a while he’d started to add little notes to his sketches, labels in the margins that had grown into snatches of thoughts, paragraphs spreading across the pages. 

He’d kept a journal since then. He’d filled up a few dozen of the damn things by now, in every size and color. He kept them shoved into a box under his bed. He never went back through them, didn’t use them for that, but he couldn’t throw them away either. 

Charles cocked his head, considering something. 

“I’m in here,” Charles said, lifting Arthur’s journal up. Arthur turned his face aside, face flaming with embarrassment. “You’re a good writer.” 

“Naw, I ain’t,” Arthur muttered, gruffly. “Jus’ ridiculous, is all.” He brought a hand up and touched his forehead, right between his eyes. “I ain’t--I ain’t ever been good at sayin’ shit,” he tried to explain. “It all gets--I get tongue-tied, or I say somethin’ stupid. But I--I can write it, sometimes. Draw it.” 

“I understand that,” said Charles, steadily. “But, Arthur, I’m--I’m past the point where this is all just fun, for me.” He gestured between them, at the horses and the little campfire and their bedrolls pushed up side by side. “And I--it’s alright if you don’t feel the same way.”

There was a grim, desperate determination in Charles’s eyes that broke Arthur’s heart a little. A self-possession and a flickering hope braided together. 

“We didn’t make any promises to each other or anything,” Charles continued, soldiering through his obvious discomfort. “So it’s alright if you don’t--if you don’t love me back, but if you don’t you have to tell me, because I can’t--this isn’t just screwing around for me, Arthur.” 

For several seconds Arthur couldn’t make any sound. His mouth worked. Finally, he managed to say, “It ain’t jus’ screwin’ around for me neither, Charles.” 

Charles looked back at him. 

Arthur dragged a hand through his hair, restlessness building beneath his skin. He felt like a firecracker, like dynamite. A fuse had been lit somewhere inside of Arthur’s chest and was fizzling fast towards a messy end. 

“I don’t--I don’t go ‘round fuckin’ people jus’ to fuck ‘em,” said Arthur. He didn’t know how to explain it. “But I ain’t--I ain’t the kinda feller who people stick around for. I’ve never--jus’ fuckin’s all I’ve ever had. I don’t know nothin’ else. So it’s not jus’ sleepin’ together for me either.” He mirrored Charles, gesturing back and forth at the space between them with pain in his eyes. 

“But I--I don’t know, Charles.” Arthur spread his hands. “I don’t know what you want from me. I’ll give it to ya, if I can, but I don’t _know._ ” Frustration leapt from Arthur’s tongue before he could snatch it back. He winced, but oddly, the note of anger in Arthur’s voice made Charles’s expression soften. 

“How d’you know you love me?” Arthur asked, shaking his head. 

Charles shrugged with one shoulder, a lopsided smile crossing his face. “I miss you, when I’m not with you,” he said. “I want to be with you when I’m not. You make me laugh. I want to make you laugh. I feel--I don’t know, at home when you’re around, wherever we are. Out here or at the house. In my room at the Saints. On the road.” 

Arthur spluttered. “That’s--I--” 

Charles’s smile evened out, became more honest, more genuine. The grief in his eyes faded and the hope got brighter and brighter, bright as coins, bright as moonlight. 

“I love you,” Charles said, strongly. He held up Arthur’s journal. “And this--nobody does this without feeling _something,_ so. Don’t think too hard about it. Do you love me too?” 

“I think so,” Arthur said, the words flying out of his mouth before he could snatch them back. He thought back to all the affection he had for Charles, for the fondness that would come up on Arthur suddenly whether Charles was in the room with him or not. He thought of missing Charles, of waking up in the middle of the night and reaching for him. “I--I think so. But I jus’--I don’t know. I don’t know _how_ t’know.” 

Charles’s smile was a blinding thing. “You’ll figure it out,” he said. “You’re telling me the truth right now, and that’s--that’s enough. For now.” 

Arthur let out a great breath, weak at the knees. There was a warning there, tied in with Charles’s happiness. Charles wouldn’t wait for Arthur to get his shit together forever. 

_He shouldn’t have to,_ Arthur thought, fiercely. _He’s--it ain’t on him, me figurin’ this out. I’m a grown man. I gotta figure it out for myself._

And he would figure it out. Arthur owed Charles that much, and he was starting to think that he owed it to himself, too. Thirty-six was a little late to be discovering love or the meaning of life or whatever other bullshit Arthur could come up with, but Hosea’d probably say something about age and wisdom and lifelong journeys towards a better, higher self, or something. 

_I want this,_ Arthur thought to himself. He could see that conviction mirrored in Charles’s face as Charles stepped closer, bare feet soft on the grass. He reached out with his empty hand. _I wanna know what Charles is talkin’ about. I wanna--I want to feel it too._

Determined, afraid, Arthur reached back. 

\---

He didn’t have a name for the things he and Charles did together under the stars. Naming it would have been dishonest, somehow. Would’ve failed to capture all of it, would’ve fallen short of what it was and what it meant. 

After, Charles slept. The road was still dragging on him, those long days he’d spent off by himself in California. What had happened out there Arthur still didn’t know, but he could feel it. 

Arthur didn’t sleep. Everything he and Charles had said to each other was stuck in his head, loud and buzzing like a choir of frogs. 

Arthur was content to watch over Charles, though. Sleep avoided him but he could do this, at least. He could lay beside Charles underneath the stars, watching the sky shift from deep blue to black to purple and pale, dawn’s grey fingers reaching out over the horizon and creasing Charles’s face. 

They’d ended up tucked into Arthur’s bedroll together, legs tangled, skin to skin. It was hot as hell, but Arthur didn’t mind. Charles’s hip dug into Arthur’s belly. His hair tickled Arthur’s nose. 

_I ain’t gonna get to keep this._ Arthur had meant what he said. He didn’t get to live the kind of life he’d lived and get to keep good things, not for long. The world didn’t work that way. 

Charles snuffled in his sleep, half a snore and half a deeper, contented breath. His nose brushed the shell of Arthur’s ear and made Arthur’s heart swell in his chest, wrung him out like a sponge. 

_I ain’t gonna get to keep this,_ Arthur told himself again, trying to inure his heart against it. He was going to have to let Charles go, one of these days. Sooner, probably, rather than later, because that was how it was for Arthur. 

This time, though, he was going to hold on as long as he could, his knuckles white.

\---

Fortunately for Arthur’s rather strained nerves, Charles didn’t drop any more bombshells on him for the rest of their camping trip. The second day out they made it up to the Ambarino highlands, to the rolling hills of poppy and sweetgrass where the sky was so blue it could cut and elk browsed the fields, most of the bulls fully, finally coming into their summer crowns. 

They had a lot of fun spending a few days up there, camping at the crest of a great hill, chasing wild ponies across the fields and tracking white-tail through the grass. Charles took Arthur hunting his way, creeping and stalking instead of laying bait, like Arthur had with Hamish, and though they didn’t kill anything Arthur had an enormously fun time letting Charles boss him around. 

They fished, too. The waters up in the highlands were clear and clean, run over with trout as long as Arthur’s forearm. 

“Thought you didn’t like to fish,” Charles said, three days in, laughing as Arthur whooped and reeled in another shining-wet steelhead. Dawn had been just breaking then too, the fish drawn to the surface of the water by the flicking fly-lures Arthur and Charles were teasing them with. 

“I do when it’s this easy,” Arthur crowed, holding up his catch triumphantly. “Now c’mon, mountain man, breakfast’s on me.” 

Blue and Cloudrunner enjoyed themselves, too. There was good riding to be had up here, gentle trails for day visitors and rougher, trickier tracks into the woods and mountains for backcountry folks. 

Arthur and Charles saw it all. They skipped stones on the river and prodded around in the mouths of caves and the bones of old homesteads. Four days in a tremendous storm fell down on them and they had to take cover in a dripping, half-fallen down old firewatch, rain sheeting off its corrugated metal roof while Arthur and Charles passed a hipflask of smokey bourbon between them.

They made love all night and for good parts of the day, too. Arthur struggled to call it that, feeling half a fool whenever he did, even in his own head, but Charles had been right; what they were doing wasn’t just fucking. 

Arthur hadn’t slept with too many folks, but he’d done it enough to know the difference between simply trying to have a good time and real, true intimacy. 

Whenever Charles touched him, there was a heat that went through Arthur that was stronger than just plain attraction. Truer. It seared Arthur down through his bones to his marrow. 

And it went beyond the sex, too. Arthur found himself mirroring Charles without thinking about it. They would automatically fall into step beside each other or finish each other’s thoughts absentmindedly, like it was instinct. Their breathing would fall into line when they sat together around a campfire, and their heartbeats slowed or sped up to match when they slept, still sharing just one sleeping bag. 

_It’s--it’s strange,_ Arthur thought, as their week out in the hills was drawing to a close. They’d come down from the highlands last night and were spending their last nights out hunkered down in Hamish’s old place if only for the luxury of running water. 

Arthur’d gotten the cabin, tucked prim and pretty against the shores of O’Creagh’s Run, when Hamish had died, just like he’d gotten the horse. He'd gotten everything in it, too, from the vintage stovetop coffee pot to the faulty wiring and the perennial chipmunk infestation. Arthur’d thought about selling the old cabin off for a while, since it was too far out from Valentine to make the drive every day and Arthur’d been pretty dug into his house on the hilltop by the time Hamish had passed, but Arthur’d never quite managed to get around to calling a realtor. 

_It’s strange,_ Arthur thought again, folded up into the cabin’s only bed with Charles beside him just barely awake, idly tracing Arthur’s tattoos. _But it ain’t bad. It’s just--diff'rent, is all._

“You’re thinking too hard,” Charles murmured, his lips ghosting over the back of Arthur’s shoulder blade, following the line of a faded ink six gun. Arthur had two, one over each shoulder blade, and they were so old that the ink had gone nearly green. 

Arthur whuffed a low, sleepy laugh. “No I ain’t,” he murmured back. 

“You are,” Charles disagreed. “I can hear it. Sounds like somebody threw a rock in a car engine.” 

“That loud, huh?” Arthur grinned to himself and rolled, suddenly, catching Charles off guard. Arthur flipped them around easy, sprawling heavy and hot over Charles’s front and pinning him to the mattress. Charles didn’t protest too much--the new position gave him room to roll his hips a little, his cock pressing up against Arthur’s in a way that made sleepy sparks frizzle up Arthur’s spine. 

“G’wan then,” Arthur taunted, teasing and quiet, leaning down to set his teeth against Charles’s collarbone, gently at first, then not so gently as Charles dug his fingers into Arthur’s hips and rolled them together again. “Shut me up, Charles. Make me stop thinkin’.” 

“That’s not hard, Arthur,” Charles said, fondly. 

Arthur guffawed. “That ain’t the only thing that’s har--hey!” 

Charles heard the shitty joke coming from a mile off and did something complicated with his hips that upended Arthur entirely, pitching him sideways and knocking the wind out of him before he could finish the joke or even start laughing. 

“Don’t even say it,” Charles said, on top of Arthur now, their positions reversed, his big hands keeping Arthur from wriggling out of his grasp.

 _Not that I want to,_ Arthur thought, blinking up at Charles. 

“Charles,” Arthur said, nearly giggling, feeling drunk on happiness and affection. “Charles, I was gonna say, that ain’t the only thing that’s hard.” 

“Oh my god,” Charles groaned, tangling a hand through Arthur’s hair, pulling his head down and his mouth to better use. “I take back everything I said. You’re the worst, actually.” 

Arthur laughed against Charles's hipbone. He knew that Charles didn't mean it. 

\---

The house and the farm were both still standing when Arthur and Charles rode back in as the week drew to a close, despite who’d been left in the house while Arthur'd been away. 

Arthur had asked Sean and Lenny to mind the house and the horses for him, Sean because he was still technically broke as shit and homeless and Lenny because Lenny was actually responsible and could be trusted with the care of the house and the animals. 

Blue and Cloudrunner were tired and eager to go back to lounging around the paddock with the rest of herd. Blue put his head up and whickered as the house and the farm came into sight. Hearing him, the rest of the horses came thundering up to the fence, even Buell, to see what all the fuss was about. 

Sean and Lenny were dozing on the front porch, Sean drinking, Lenny whittling. Lenny stood up when he saw Arthur and Charles coming, but Sean didn’t bother. 

Arthur lifted a hand in Lenny’s direction and guided Blue towards the barn, casting an eye over his property to make sure everything was in order. 

Lenny’d done a good job. The horses all looked healthy enough and the goats were chewing away at the lawn industriously. Several cats blinked their slow, regal blinks at Arthur as he passed them by. Copper was up on the porch with Sean, napping on his feet, but Arthur could hear Cain booming away in the garden, likely rooting out a rabbit or some other such small, burrowing creature with the enthusiasm that only a hound dog could muster. 

“You can go inside an’ put’cher feet up, if you wanna,” Arthur offered, dismounting and unlatching the barn. After a week out in the hills, Arthur wanted to give Blue and Cloudrunner a good hose-off and brushing-out, wanted to check their feet for stones and their legs for any odd swelling, but he could do it on his own. 

Charles snorted. “After we’ve taken care of the horses,” he said, stubborn and responsible.

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Suit yourself. But I’m gonna get in the shower first, if you wait.”

“I’ll survive,” Charles assured him, sliding off Cloudrunner’s high back and clicking his tongue at her, guiding her over to the ties. Arthur put Blue into a stall and stripped the horse of his tack, scratching Blue under the chin while he was at it. He dumped some feed in a bucket for the worn-out horse, made sure there was cleanish water in the trough, and headed over to dig up what he'd need to give the horses a good scrubbing. 

Charles did the same for Cloudrunner, hooking her to the side of the barn so they could hose her down and peeling the saddle off her back. Cloud, usually grey with darker grey stripes, was almost ashen with dust and Blue, usually a buttery red-gold, was mousy brown. 

“Hose an’ spigot’s outside,” Arthur said. “I’ll put the saddles up.” 

Charles nodded and handed his saddle over. Arthur, grunting a bit at the weight, hauled everything into the tack room and put it all up, making sure to leave the saddle pads, which were damp with sweat, out to dry. Blue’s bit had gone gummy with chewed grass, but that was a problem for later. 

When Arthur’d gotten everything arranged to his liking he rejoined Charles back with Cloudrunner. Charles had hauled the hose in and was testing the water against his hand, making sure it wasn’t too cold. Cloudrunner was lipping affectionately at his hair. 

Fond, Arthur smiled to himself and grabbed a few buckets, sponges and a bottle of mane’n’tail. 

Charles, satisfied with the water’s temperature, started to hose Cloudrunner off, passing the water over her carefully, sending sheets of wet dirt dripping off her barrel and legs. They soaped her down once the worst of the dust was off and combed the tangles out of her mane and tail, giving her another pass-over with the hose to help cool her off and make sure all the soap was gone. 

Regular color restored, Cloudruner was given a handful of carrots for her trouble and sent off to rejoin the rest of the herd in the paddock, which she did at a sedate, lazy pace. 

Blue, seeing that his turn under the hose had come up, put his ears back when Arthur reached for him. 

Arthur sighed. “Behave, now,” he warned, for all the good it would do him, and resigned himself to getting wet. 

Blue took the hose with ill grace. Anchored to the side of the barn as he was he couldn’t get away from them, but he sure could make their lives miserable for a few minutes, and he did so with gleeful abandon. 

When Charles passed the hose over his back and shoulders, Blue kicked. When Arthur got him soaped up, Blue yanked his head around and tried to bite. Even rinsing the ungrateful bastard off had Blue bucking out with both his back legs, trying to catch one of them unawares, and when they were all done the big bastard shook himself off like a dog, drenching Arthur and Charles both. 

“Fool horse,” Arthur growled under his breath, giving the gelding the gimlet eye. Blue pinned his ears again to meet the challenge. 

“He can stay here to dry off,” Arthur decided. “Since he wants to be an asshole.” 

Charles chuckled. “I’m sure he’ll learn his lesson,” he said, surreptitiously nudging a bucket of feed over so Blue wouldn't starve. Arthur pretended not to see, happy enough to let Charles play good cop with the horses. 

They walked up to the house together, accosted by the barn cats. Lenny had settled back down into one of the porch chairs and Sean was definitely asleep, mouth hanging open to let the flies in, a beer bottle slack in his hand. 

Arthur sighed. “Lenny,” he said, raising a hand. He didn’t bother with Sean. Sean slept like a dead man, especially when he’d been drinking. “How was it, kid?” 

“Hey, Arthur,” Lenny said, popping up and stretching. He flashed Arthur a grin and Charles a smaller, politer smile. “It was good. No problems, except your billy goat’s possessed by the devil.” 

“Yeah, he’s a… special one,” Arthur said. “You ain’t have any problems? Horses all good? No coyotes came down for the chickens?” 

“Everything was good,” Lenny said, rocking back on his heels. He was young yet, probably one of the youngest among them, just a few months past eighteen, and Arthur liked him enormously. Despite his age Lenny was steady as anything, watchful and intelligent and quick on his feet. 

He had a lot of potential, Lenny, and he wasn’t squandering it away like Sean was. Sean only wanted a good drink or a good fight or a good fuck. Lenny wanted more than that. Arthur was glad the kid had decided to stick around. Dutch's folk had lost their high-minded ideals, freedom and collectivism and the purifying power of righteous anger or whatever the fuck they'd believed in years and years ago, before they'd settled down in Valentine, even, but having Lenny around reminded Arthur of the old days, a bit. Lenny had that same pure spirit, that same animating fire, in him as Dutch and Hosea'd had all those years ago. 

“Glad to hear it,” Arthur said, clapping Lenny on the shoulder. He thought about kicking Sean awake for a second or two, but let the urge pass. He titled his head towards Sean. “How’d this one behave?” 

Lenny rolled his eyes. “He’s useless, but he ain’t bad company,” Lenny said. “He’s good with the horses, though that big cremello stallion of yours bucked him clear to the other side of the paddock.” 

“‘S what he gets for tryin’ out Buell,” said Arthur, used to Buell tossing his friends off like a rodeo bronc instead of a senior horse rapidly approaching decrepitude. “That horse don’t like nobody, not even me.” 

“You can ride him, though,” Lenny pointed out, with a bit of envy in his voice. Lenny came from country folk and was just as good with the horses as Sean. Even Lyra liked Lenny. Buell wouldn't take him, though. Everybody down around the shop had tried Buell once or twice. Hosea'd lasted the longest out of everybody but Arthur. Arthur could ride Buell more or less without incident, as long as he paid attention. Hosea'd managed a whole twenty minutes. 

Poor Lenny'd lasted less than five, and it sounded as if Sean had only managed to touch his knees to Buell's sides before Buell had pitched a fit. 

“Buell knows that if he bucks _me_ off, I’m sellin’ him own the river for glue,” Arthur explained, cheerfully, though he’d do no such thing and Buell probably knew that too. That horse could sniff out weakness better than a bloodhound. “Me an’ Buell understand each other, ‘s all. We're both grouchy an' unsociable. Now c’mon, head in an’ grab a beer or somethin’. Me an’ Charles are gonna clean ourselves up a bit--one at a time,” Arthur added, as Lenny blushed darkly, mortified, “an' then we were gonna order in a pizza or two from Bacchus Station. You wanna eat?” 

“I could eat,” said Lenny, once he’d managed to stop blushing. He looked between Arthur and Charles. “If--if y’all didn’t want some time to yourselves, I mean.” 

Arthur snorted. “Poor Charles here is prob’ly tired’a seein’ just my ugly mug,” he said. He elbowed Charles, gently. “I’ll leave you two to it, then. If this fool wakes up,” he gestured at Sean, who let out a rumbling, beer-soaked snore, “he can eat too, I guess.” 

Arthur left Charles and Lenny on the porch, feeling only a twinge of nerves. 

If Charles had been serious out in the highlands--if he’d meant it, that this wasn’t just some extended fun--then he ought to get to know Arthur’s friends. 

_My family,_ Arthur thought. Some of Dutch’s people Arthur wasn’t so close with, but some were as close to him as brothers or sisters. Lenny was one of them. _Sean’s maybe an unruly nephew,_ Arthur thought. 

He climbed into the shower, shucking off his clothes, and spent a good ten minutes just standing under the water. Arthur’s shower never got hot, really, only lukewarm, but he didn’t mind. He scrubbed the dirt and dust off himself, even soaped off his beard, which had come in over the days he’d been out in the hills.

 _Charles didn’t seem to mind it much._ Arthur scratched his chin, rueful over his patchy scar. He’d shave before he went in to work again, to try and look like less of a sour-tempered hillbilly, but for now Arthur was too tired to bother. 

He toweled off and scrounged up some fresh clothes. Charles and Lenny had moved inside, taking up Arthur’s little kitchen, and were talking about where they’d come from. 

“--Marks, Mississippi,” Charles was saying, voice low. “He ran off when he was fifteen, found work picking gold at Homestake, up in Lead. He met my mother on a trip to Pierre. She was full Oglala, _Oyuȟpe Tiyošpaye._ They got married and lived in Pierre for a while.” 

“That where you’re from, then?” Lenny asked. Arthur paused in the hallway, listening. He knew the vague details of Charles’s childhood, just like Charles knew the general shape of Arthur’s. Tragedy, death, the system, juvie. The Army as a way out, then the long-haul trucking. 

“I was born in Pierre,” Charles said. “But I grew up with my mother’s kin, on Pine Ridge. She had a whole handful of sisters and uncles and cousins and nephews. My father’s people--I never knew them. He didn’t talk about it much, but from what I gathered his leaving Marks wasn’t entirely voluntary.” 

Lenny made a sympathetic sound. “My pa never had no people,” he said. “We’re from Macon, I know that much, but _his_ pa left in the early twenties--a dispute over votin’ rights, my pa said--and my pa was born a wanderer.” 

“It can be hard, being without roots,” said Charles, and Arthur backed off, skirted the kitchen and left them to their talk. It wasn’t his place to eavesdrop, not over something like this.

Arthur slipped out onto the porch and breathed in the cooling evening air. Sean rattled out another snore. Copper thumped his tail against the porch. 

Arthur stayed out there until the pizza came, a harried-looking young man coming up the drive in a spluttering, off-green sedan. Arthur paid the man with a fistful of bills, took the pizza, and kicked Sean awake at last. 

The four of them wouldn’t fit in Arthur’s kitchen so they all ate outside, passing around slices and beer while the dogs begged for scraps and Sean regaled them all with tales of his wild exploits both in Ireland and here in the States. 

Lenny and Sean stayed the night, snoring on Arthur’s couch. 

“What d’you think?” Arthur asked, as he and Charles folded themselves into bed together. “Wanna scandalize ‘em a bit?” 

Charles laughed. “I’m up for it if you are,” he said. He had a surprisingly mischievous streak, did Charles, and Arthur found that he liked it quite a fair bit. 

“Excellent,” Arthur rumbled, voice low and rough. “C’mere. I got a few ideas.” 

Neither Sean nor Lenny made any kind of smart comment the next morning over a breakfast of leftovers, but neither of them could quite manage to look Arthur or Charles in the eye either. Arthur grinned to himself over his cup of coffee, pleased. 

Served them right, the idiots. 

\---

Reliance hadn’t gotten any worse over the days Arthur’d been gone, and the day before he was supposed to go back to work he got a call from the rancher at the asscrack of dawn. 

“Roads’re clear,” the rancher said. “Come get’chur horse, mister. We’re movin’ on tomorrow and I cain’t take her with me.” 

Arthur rolled out of bed with a groan. Charles stirred. 

“Wher’ya goin’?” Charles mumbled as Arthur heaved himself to his feet and stretched, back cracking. Charles's usual crispness of speech was worn soft with sleep. 

“Goin’ to get Lia,” Arthur said. “Gotta run by the shop first, pick up Hosea’s truck an’ trailer. Wanna come with?” 

“Goin’ to the shop first?” The promise of coffee perked Charles right up. Arthur laughed softly. 

“Yeah,” he said. “In’erested?” 

“Sure,” said Charles, reaching blindly down from the bed for his pants, which had been discarded in a rush last night. “Gimme--” he cleared his throat. “Five minutes.” 

Arthur gave him ten, because Arthur still wasn’t a morning person either. He managed to pull himself together, though, his worry for Reliance rising again, even though he knew the horse was about as well as she could be, given the circumstances. 

Charles joined him on the back of Arthur’s bike, his weight familiar now, and they made it to Lost Country’s parking lot in decent time. 

“Arthur?” Hosea asked, poking his head out of the kitchen to get a look at who was making so much noise outside so early in the morning. Hosea frowned. “You’re not here to work, are you?”

“Naw,” Arthur said. “Rancher called. I'm gonna head up t'Colter an' get Lia from him. Charles here is keepin’ me company. It okay if I borrow your truck and get this poor fool,” he tilted his head at Charles, who let out a jaw-cracking yawn almost on cue, “some coffee ‘fore we hit the road?” 

Hosea blinked. “Yeah, ‘s alright with me,” he said. “Go in ‘round the front, though, okay? Somebody,” and Hosea ducked his head back into the kitchen, probably to shoot whoever had been unfortunate enough to rouse his ire that morning a dark look, “made an almighty mess in here, and we’re still cleanin’ up.” 

“‘S fine with me, old man,” Arthur said. “C’mon, Charles. Let’s get you the vee-eye-pee treatment.” 

Tilly was manning the bar when they walked in, drinking a towering whipped cream monstrosity out of a red Solo cup with a straw. There was flour in her hair. 

“Hey, Arthur,” she said. “Good morning?” 

“Better’n yours, I think,” said Arthur. There was flour stuck in the creases of Tilly’s dress and in the shell of her ear. He couldn’t imagine what had happened in the back but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, either. 

Tilly caught the direction of his thoughts and grimaced. “Micah,” she said, and that was explanation enough. “What can I get you, Arthur?”

“Aw, don’ worry ‘bout me,” said Arthur. “I know my way around. Charles here’d probably like whatever it is you got in that cup, though, ‘s long as it ain’t got liquor in it. I might need you t’help me hitch up the trailer,” Arthur added to Charles, hoping he hadn’t overstepped, but Charles just waved his concern aside.

”Of course it ain’t got liquor in it, Arthur, who do you think I am? Karen?” Tilly laughed. “It’s six in the morning. It’s just sugar.” 

“I like sugar,” said Charles, leaning forward so his elbows caught the edge of the bar. He lifted his chin at Tilly’s drink, plainly interested. Arthur rolled his eyes. 

Tilly went through a laundry list of ingredients as Arthur hopped over the counter and fetched himself a mug of black coffee. She’s gotten to the sixth or seventh ingredient, which was mint syrup of all things, and Charles was still nodding along. Seeing that he’d lost Charles for the next few minutes, Arthur sipped his coffee and stuck his head in the kitchen to see what all the fuss had been about. 

He whistled. 

“What’s goin’ on in here, a second Desert Storm?” Arthur asked. Hosea, covered in flour from the neck down, straightened up and glowered at him. 

“Wipe that smile off your face,” Hosea warned. “If me and _these_ idiots--” he jerked a thumb at Micah and Bill, who looked like they’d been up all night and were also covered in flour -- “can’t get all this cleaned up, _you’re_ gonna have to deal with it tomorrow.” 

Arthur paled. “Cain’t,” he said, backing up quickly. “I’m, uh. Sick.” He coughed into his fist. “‘S terminal, I’m afraid.” 

Hosea threw a dish towel at him. 

Snickering to himself, Arthur fetched Hosea’s keys and scrambled out of the kitchen before Hosea could press-gang him into helping the other boys clean. He wasn’t sure what had possessed Micah to empty what looked to be nearly all the flour Lost Country’d had in its kitchen, but he sure wasn’t going to deal with it. 

Back at the bar, Tilly’d made Charles a drink to match her own, all whipped cream and whiffs of mint. It actually didn’t look too bad, and Charles was clearly enjoying it, whatever it was.

“Ready to go, Charles?” Arthur asked, finishing off his own coffee. “We’re gonna have to swing by Hosea’s for the trailer.”

“Sounds good to me.” Charles took his drink to go, thanked Tilly, and they left the way they came, leaving Arthur’s bike for Hosea’s truck, which grumbled to life as Arthur settled himself into the driver's seat and twisted the ignition. 

Hosea lived just down the road in a pretty little wood frame house on a pretty little hectare of land bordering the woods just west of Valentine. Bessie’d passed long before they’d all settled here, so Hosea hadn’t bothered with a big house like Dutch had. A bedroom and a kitchen had been enough for Hosea, with some land to look at and some trees to give him shade. 

As Arthur pulled up, backing in down the drive to get over the trailer hitch, he caught sight of Dutch’s '55 Panhead, white paint gleaming, and frowned a bit. 

“Isn’t that Dutch’s bike?” Charles asked, observant as ever. “Do he and Hosea live together?” 

“No,” said Arthur, confused himself. “Dutch’s got a house up the road from here, towards Valentine proper. He lives there with Molly. Hosea’s out here by himself, ‘less he’s got one of us postin’ up with him for a week or two.” 

The sound of the truck rumbling down the drive drew Dutch out fast enough, brought him padding out to the porch to see what was going on. 

“Ah,” Arthur said, grimacing in understanding. “He an’ Molly are on the outs. She must’a kicked him out.” 

“How can you tell?”

“He looks like shit,” Arthur replied. Dutch did, honestly. His hair was untidy and he hadn’t shaved in a day or two, beard black against his cheeks. He’d forgone his usual polished affectations, the waistcoat, the pocket watch, the smart pants and the gel in his hair. Standing there barefoot on Hosea's porch, Dutch looked like what he was; a man of forty-six just as subject to the ups and downs of life as any of them, despite all his high notions and sharp wit. 

“He might’ve just gotten up,” Charles pointed out, but his head was tilted to the side a bit. He was listening and learning. 

“Don’t matter,” Arthur explained. “Dutch always puts himself together ‘fore seein’ anybody, ‘less he’s had a fight with his lady. That he’s lettin’ me see him standin’ there in nothin’ but a tee-shirt an’ some boxers tells me he an’ Molly went at it.” 

Charles whistled sympathetically. “That’s rough.” 

Arthur shrugged. “Dutch goes through women like I go through a pack’a cigarettes,” he said. “Monogamy ain’t in his nature. I ain’t surprised Molly’s put him out, anyway. Was bound to happen eventually, though usually it’s the women leavin’ Dutch’s house, not the other way ‘round. House’s in his name.” 

Charles was quiet for a minute, digesting that information. Arthur backed in as close to the hitch as he could without laying eyes on it, then threw the truck into park and hopped out to get a better look. 

He lifted a hand in Dutch’s direction. “Ol’ man,” Arthur greeted. 

Dutch snorted at him. 

“Rough night?” Arthur continued blithely, walking around to the back of the truck. He scowled. He was about six inches forward and three inches too far to the left to hitch up. 

“Shut up, Arthur,” Dutch grumbled. 

“Aw, she’ll forgive you, Dutch, ‘f you want her to,” Arthur said. He wasn’t really in the mood for Dutch’s sulking--the man was nearer to fifty than forty. He’d done this song and dance with a dozen women all across Arthur’s life after Annabelle had died. Annabelle had been the only woman Dutch had ever been interested in, really interested in, as far as Arthur could tell. Annabelle had been Dutch’s match. She was many long years dead, though, and while other women had certainly caught Dutch's eye since her passing, as of yet none of them had been able to take Dutch in hand the way Annabelle had. 

Dutch ought to be used to pissing off women by now. 

“Jus’ get her some flowers or somethin’,” Arthur said. Molly O’Shea was not a complicated woman. “She jus’ wants your attention, Dutch.” 

Dutch scowled.

Arthur shrugged. “Or cut her loose. But don’t waste your time goin’ back an’ forth about it. I’m sure Hosea’ll want his couch back eventually.” 

Dutch snorted at him again, deeply unimpressed, and stalked off inside. Arthur shrugged to himself. If Dutch wanted to mope around and feel sorry for himself, he’d earned the right. Arthur did plenty of his own sulking.

“Need help?” Charles asked, sticking his head out of the passenger window. 

“Wanna guide me?” 

“Sure.” Charles hopped out too, coming over to inspect the trailer. “You’re about three inches too far to the left.” 

Arthur sighed. “Thanks, Charles.” 

With Charles waving him right and left in the rearview mirror, Arthur got the truck lined up right and the hitch on. Charles tightened the bolt and strung the chains while Arthur made sure the trailer still had what he needed to make sure Reliance would be alright. 

They were off north again within a few minutes. Dutch did not make a reappearance. 

The coffee Arthur’d had at Lost Country had woke him up some, but neither he nor Charles felt much like conversation. They drove up in companionable, easy silence, crossing the Dakota and rumbling up the high mountain roads, which were dry now but still brown and cracked with old mud. 

Colter was a rundown little place. Back in the day it had been a mining outpost, but the gold in the hills had dried up some time in the eighteen seventies and the town had lain fallow for half a century until some rancher’d bought it and turned it into a cattle station. Now half the state of Ambarino ran their cattle through Colter in the summertime, letting the cattle grow fat on sweet Grizzly Mountain grass before driving them south and east to New Hanover to winter over in gentler climes. 

Arthur passed three, four thousand head of cattle on his way in, the fields around the old town turned to mud and a seething river of brown and black, the sound and smell of all that beef packed in together rising to the mountain tops. 

The particular rancher Arthur was looking for had set up his operation on the western side of Colter, claiming a few ramshackle bards for his horses and cowboys. The man’s name was Donovan and he was a born-and-bred cattleman, lean and stringy, years and years on the range creased into his sun-beaten face. Arthur'd lent him horses for a few years now, and Donovan always made sure they were taken care of right before dropping them back off in the fall. Reliance going lame was the first time Arthur'd had a problem with Donovan. 

He saw Arthur rumbling up and waved him over, letting him pull the truck in across the deep muddy tracks up to the side of one particularly worn old barn. 

“Van der Linde,” Donovan grunted. Arthur didn’t know if the man had ever bothered to learn Arthur’s first name, which was alright by Arthur--he’d never learned Donovan’s first name either. 

“Donovan,” Arthur greeted back, sticking his hand out the window. Donovan had a man’s handshake, brisk and businesslike. “Where’s my horse?” 

Donovan beckoned him on and Arthur followed, shutting the truck engine off and trailing after Donovan into the barn with Charles at his side. Arthur introduced Charles as just “Mister Smith,” which Donovan met with another grunt. 

“We been checkin’ her hooves twice a day,” said Donovan. “She’s still only lame in the one.”

“That’s good,” Arthur murmured, peering through the gloom. He found Reliance lying down against the wall of her stall, her legs tucked beneath her. She put her ears up when Arthur called her name, softly, but didn’t stand. His heart twisted. “She founder at all?” 

Donovan shook his head. “Naw, though I thought f’sure she would. That’s a hard-workin’ horse you got there. We’ve been givin’ her Relaquin, on the vet’s orders. Otherwise she was like to work herself into another bad leg, or worse.” 

Arthur nodded, He unfastened the stall door and slipped inside, moving slow and careful so Lia didn’t spook or startle. “Hey, sweetheart,” he crooned lowly, watching Reliance respond to his presence. 

She still didn’t stand, but he seemed to come into a bit more awareness of her surroundings. Her ears pricked up and she whuffed, low, head coming up to see who was coming near. 

“”S jus me, old girl,” Arthur murmured, crouching down beside her. She snuffled at his sleeves for a minute and then lipped at him, tiredly. 

Arthur ran his hands down her neck and barrel, slowly feeling her out for any other obvious ailments, and when he found none he moved onto her legs, checking her knees and hooves. 

She put her ears back when he touched her bad leg, but the other three feet were alright, at least to travel and get Lia back home. 

“She looks pretty decent, considerin’,” Arthur said gruffly, nodding his thanks at Donovan. He tried not to loan his animals out to irresponsible people who’d hurt them or worse, either intentionally or through neglect, but it was always nice to see that Arthur’s trust hadn’t been misplaced. 

“Charles,” said Arthur. “Come help me get her up, yeah? She knows you, she oughta be alright with you here.” 

Charles nodded and came in just as quietly and slowly as Arthur had, murmuring encouragement when Reliance stretched out her neck to greet him. Between the two of them, each braced at one of Reliance’s shoulders, they got her on her feet again, though her head hung low and her steps were unsteady and hesitant. 

Donovan cleared the way for them, shooing off the ranch hands and cowboy’s who were milling about, tending to horses of their own, and Arthur and Charles coaxed Lia along between them until they got her up into the trailer. Arthur usually left his horses tied pretty loose in the trailer but he didn’t want Lia to lie back down, so he made sure she was tied tightly, secure but still with enough room to nibble on some feed or stick her nose out the slat if she felt like it. 

“We got a good few weeks' work outta her, ‘fore she started limpin’,” Donovan said, handing Arthur over an envelope thick with cash. “She’ll be missed. All but two of my hands brought half-broke horses this year, for some godforsaken reason. Most of 'em have never worked a cattle drive before. I know you prob’ly ain’t wanna risk it, but you got any other horses around your place who like the work?”

Arthur chewed his lip for a moment. He was likely to need the extra money if Lia took a long time recovering, and a few more horses out to work would mean more time for Arthur to look after Reliance. It wasn’t Donovan’s fault she’d gotten laminitis. Sometimes horses picked up a lame hoof for no reason at all, if the grass was too wet or the sky too blue. 

“I got two who’ve done ranch work before,” Arthur said. “A little mustang and a fox trotter, gelding and mare. They’re yours for the season, ‘f you send somebody to come pick ‘em up. The mare'll need a gentle hand. She's nervous.” 

Donovan shook Arthur’s hand, gratefully, and swore his horses would be the most well-treated animals west of the Mississippi. He made arrangements for his son, called Junior, to swing by Arthur’s some time during the week and pick up Hemingway and Kestrel. 

Charles hopped in the trailer to check on Reliance again--and to likely feed her some sugar, to make up for her ordeal--and when he was ready they rode south again, this time taking the winding mountain roads through the Grizzlies rather than cut down through Valentine again. 

“Where you off too after this?” Arthur asked, as they cleared the high mountains and the road dropped lower towards the hills. “Back to work?” 

“Nah, I’m not riding out ‘til morning,” said Charles. He yawned, jaw cracking. “I figured I’d help you with the horses today, since you’ll be mothering this one.” He jerked his chin towards the trailer, eyes fond. 

Arthur grimaced apologetically. “You can head out if y’wanna,” Arthur said. He was very likely to spend the rest of the day fussing over Reliance. He couldn’t help it. He hated to see his animals in pain. “I ain’t gonna be much company, I’m afraid.” 

Charles rolled his eyes. 

“I’ll take the trailer down to Lost Country for you, if you want," Charles offered. “‘S long as you don’t mind me bringing your bike back up, that is.” 

Arthur hesitated. “You can ride?” he asked. 

Charles watched Arthur steadily, his exasperation mostly fond. “Learned how in the Rangers,” he said. “Sometimes it was the best way to get around the mangroves during Just Cause. Army prefers Kawasakis, but I can ride a Harley.” 

“If you’re sure,” Arthur said. If he didn’t trust Charles with his bike at this point, he was pretty much fucked, wasn’t he? Charles had seen so many of the soft, vulnerable parts of Arthur by now that letting him ride Arthur’s bike should almost be a consolation prize. “I hate t’put you out on your last day off for the week.” 

Charles waved a hand, unconcerned. “Happy to help,” he said. “It’s good you’re so concerned about your horses. Tells me a lot about you.”

Arthur grunted, feeling scrutinized again, and resisted the urge to hunker down over the steering wheel. They had crossed over Donner Falls, taking the highway instead of the horse trails, and Arthur knew all the mountains around him by name and shape now, unlike the ones farther west. 

“What’s it tell you ‘bout me?” He grumbled. 

Charles’s eyes turned up at the corners, the way they did when he was feeling really, truly fond of Arthur. “That you’re a good man,” he said, simply. 

Arthur reddened. He didn’t have anything to say to that, not anything that would let him get away without an argument, so he said nothing at all. 

Charles smiled to himself and let Arthur cling to his pride. A man had to draw the line somewhere, after all. 

\---

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Charles murmured drowsily later that night, much later, after the trailer’d been returned to Hosea’s place and Reliance had been settled into the barn, her hoof tended to, the vet called, the rest of the animals looked after. 

His weight beside Arthur was a living thing. They hadn’t fucked, not tonight, and Arthur didn’t think they were going to; they just lay beside each other, skin to skin, warm and drowsy and so familiar to each other by now that their breath lined up, their hearts beating in echoes. 

_I like this almost as much as the other part,_ Arthur let himself think, his eyes closed in contentment. _Maybe more, if I’m bein’ honest._

That wasn’t a thought he would ever voice, not really, but maybe he’d write it down. Maybe he’d let Charles read it one day. 

“Yeah?” Arthur murmured back, turning his head to press a clumsy kiss to Charles’s jaw. Charles hummed, the sound shivering across Arthur’s forehead. 

“Yeah,” said Charles, around a mighty yawn. “I ran into Mister Van der Linde--” 

“Please,” Arthur interrupted, “call him Dutch, _Mister Van der Linde_ ’ll go right to his ego, an’ he don’t need no more help with that--”

“--and he said to thank you for the advice,” Charles continued, like Arthur hadn’t interrupted at all. “I guess he’s made up with… Molly?”

Arthur rumbled, letting Charles know he’d gotten it right. He was a little surprised, honestly. It wasn’t like Dutch to string a lady along--maybe he cared about Molly more than Arthur’d thought. 

“He got her flowers or something,” Charles said. “And I guess they’re hosting a potluck at their house next weekend. Sounded like a big event. Some annual thing, Mister Van der Linde said.” 

Arthur counted the days in his head and groaned. He couldn’t believe that he’d forgotten. “July twentieth,” he said. “It’s… well, I guess you could say it’s an anniversary. ‘S when Hosea stepped off a plane fresh from ‘Nam and met Dutch, who was runnin’ shills in the lobby at Ell-Ay-Ecks. July twentieth, nineteen sixty-nine.” 

Charles whistled. “They’ve been friends a long time,” he said. 

Arthur nodded. “Yeah, ‘side from a year or two when Hosea was off with his old lady. Bessie,” he clarified, catching Charles’s confused expression. “Hosea was real sweet on her. They tried--they tried the American dream for a while, back when I was real young. Eighteen, nineteen. House, white picket fence, the whole thing. Didn’t last. Hosea’s near as restless as I am. 

“He an’ Bessie came back after a few months, maybe a year. I got a dog out’a it, though. Boomer. Big old pit bull. That was a good dog.” 

Charles hummed. “I was told to tell you that we’re both supposed to be at this cookout,” Charles said, almost apologetically. “It’s _non-negotiable._ ” Charles said it with the cadence Dutch would have, firm but jovial at the same time. 

Arthur gave a bone-cracking yawn of his own. 

“Yeah, alright,” he said. “‘S all fine with me, if you ain’t mind how rowdy it’ll get.” 

“I can handle rowdy,” said Charles, amused. “Should I bring something?” 

“Aw, c’mon,” Arthur rumbled, throwing an arm more firmly over Charles, lying still and heavy, sleep dancing just around the corners of his eyes. “Don’ worry ‘bout it now, yeah? We got a whole--” he stopped to yawn again, burrowing tighter against Charles despite the heat. “A whole week. ‘S gonna be fine.” 

“You say that now,” Charles said, amused, “but you’re gonna be worried about it when I get in again on Friday.” 

“No ‘m not,” Arthur argued sleepily. “I ain’t worried.” He was definitely lying, but Charles just hummed again and ran his fingers through Arthur’s hair. 

_Charles is a good sort,_ Arthur managed to think, as sleep rose up like a mountain wind and carried him off. _I’m glad he decided to stick around. I’m real glad._

\---

Friday came around fast enough. The end of July was on them with brutal heat and humidity but the nights were still cool enough, and even though worrying about what his--guest? Plus-one? Boyfriend? _Boyfriend_ sounded stupid to Arthur’s ears, whenever he tried to voice it outloud. _Boyfriend_ was childish, silly. The word failed to capture the depth of what Arthur felt for Charles, and what he was suspecting Charles felt about him--partner was going to think of the annual Van der Linde cookout was something that Arthur would devote a fair bit of time too, he was just too goddamn busy to manage it. 

The vet came out and took a look at Lia on Sunday, after Charles slipped out of bed and made for the road. He prescribed stall rest and a fuck ton of pain meds to encourage the stubborn mare to stay off her feet, but seemed optimistic enough about her chances of recovery. 

Donovan’s son Junior came by on Sunday too with a trailer and a few other boys, who loaded Hemingway and Kestrel up with care and made approving noises about the rest of Arthur’s horses. 

Arthur went back in on Sunday afternoon, after the dreaded post-church crowd had been and went, to prepare deliveries for the morning. The flour fiasco had been resolved, apparently, so Arthur had no trouble, though he did grimace at the volume of shit he’d have to cart out in the morning. 

“He ain’t slowin’ down, huh?” Arthur asked Hosea, scratching the back of his neck. “How much of this is s’posed to make it down to Rhodes?” 

“Near half,” Hosea said darkly. “And now Micah’s got us involved in this moonshine thing, sellin’ it _ad hoc_ under the table. I’ve got Javier and Bill casin’ customers most every night because of it, lookin’ for undercover Ay-Tee-Eff.” 

Arthur whistled. ATF was no joke, despite the reputation they had among the rest of the law enforcement crowd. It was one thing for Dutch to slip the county sheriffs a few grand a month to look the other way when Lost Country let hookers come in and ply their trade, but federals were a fair bit more dangerous to offer bribes to. 

“They sniff out any?” 

“Javier spotted two last week,” Hosea said. He shook his head. “We’re heading for trouble if we keep up this way, Arthur. The money selling moonshine’s good, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know if it’s worth it.” 

Arthur grimaced. “Dutch is--has he been strange, lately? I saw him at your place the other day an’ he was as sour as I’ve ever seen him.”

Hosea shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, old and drawn. “I really don’t anymore, Arthur.” 

So Arthur spent most of the week running interference between Dutch and the old man, trying to keep Dutch in a good mood and also trying to make sure that everybody, even their newer folks, knew how to spot a fucking cop in the bar. 

He ran deliveries too, all up and down the Flat Iron basin. He was in Rhodes three times, Strawberry twice, Van Horn four. He had no trouble any of those times but he was vigilant every single run, fiercely protective over his cases of beer and his boxes of doughnuts. 

Arthur thought he might’ve been tailed a time or two, once in Lemoyne by a beaten-up old Impala and once in West Elizabeth by a fellow in a green Camaro, of all things, but both times the cars peeled off well before Arthur made it back to the shop. 

He passed the information on to the others just in case. Arthur wasn’t the only one running deliveries now; on his off days, Kieran and Lenny were doing it, both having apparently risen enough in Hosea’s esteem to be handed the responsibility, though neither was yet allowed to run out alone. 

Arthur was so busy running around that by the time his shift wrapped up on Friday and he remembered that Dutch’s cookout was tomorrow, he decided it was too late to worry about throwing Charles in with the whole enormous pack of them. 

Arthur’d bring enough food for both of them, anyway, and hopefully last year’s edict, issued by Hosea, banning anything harder than weed and liquor, would be followed. 

Charles rolled in late, well after Arthur’d tended to the horses for the day, fed the chickens, chased the goats out of his garden. 

Arthur had posted himself up on the porch, as per usual, a beer mostly forgotten by his side and his journal open on his lap, Copper snoring at his feet. Arthur’d finished a sketch of Reliance, who was now on her feet again and taking a handful of tentative, sore steps every few hours, and was working on another of a deer he’d seen on a hilltop outside of Rhodes, a proud old beck with so much moss stuck in his antlers Arthur had initially mistaken him for a tree. 

The sound of the Bonneville bouncing up the drive was familiar, now. When Charles stepped out he looked tired, the road still heavy, but that awful distance he’d come home with last time was absent. 

Arthur breathed a little sigh of relief. 

“Hey,” he said, closing his journal and standing up, stretching. All the joints in his back popped and his shirt rode up, exposing a strip of his belly. 

“Hey,” said Charles, his eyes drawn to that sliver of skin. 

Arthur smiled. “C’mon in,” he invited. “I missed’cha.” 

Smiling back, Charles did. 

\---

“Anything I should be worried about?” Charles asked, his tone light and joking. Or mostly joking. Arthur was getting fairly good at hearing what Charles _didn’t_ say, and Charles didn’t say a lot. 

Saturday had come and gone and was winding to a close, now, the evening coming in purple and heavy. They were a bit late, but the annual Van der Linde cookout didn’t start until after dark most years anyway. 

“Only Hosea’s shit-ass sense of humor,” Arthur promised. He reached across the space between them--little enough, as they were both crammed into Arthur’s little bathroom, Arthur shaving, Charles braiding his hair--and rubbed his thumb against the corner of Charles’s jaw, where a dull bruise was forming. 

Charles had finally convinced Arthur to let him try his hand at riding Buell. 

Charles was a deft hand with horses, a better rider than Arthur was, in truth, so Arthur hadn’t seen the harm, and Buell had behaved at first. 

It turned out that the old gluebag had been biding his time, though, lulling Charles into a false sense of security, and had bucked Charles clean off as soon as Charles had relaxed his hold on Buell’s head. 

Arthur’d rescued Charles from the tree he’d been pitched into and had lunged Buell silly after. Charles hadn’t minded too much, not really. He’d lasted a damn sight longer on Buell’s back than any of Arthur’s other friends, except for Hosea. 

Still, Arthur felt bad about the bruise. He’d made it up to Charles, of course, but still. 

“Everyone else oughta behave themselves,” Arthur continued. “Well, Micah will be an asshole, but he knows if he’s too much of one and I hear about it I’ll beat him senseless, so he should be fine.”

“You don’t need to defend my honor, you know,” Charles said, definitely amused now. 

Arthur snorted. “‘Course I do,” he said. “But naw, it oughta be a nice evenin’. Dutch has a pretty little piece of land and Molly can cook a bit, though I think Missus Grimshaw’s managing the pig.” 

“I’ve met both of them, right?”

“You’ve _definitely_ met Missus Grimshaw,” Arthur said. “Older woman, black and grey hair? Breathes fire?”

Charles chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve met her.”

“But you might not’ve met Molly,” Arthur continued. “She don’t come ‘round the bar much. She’s, uh, well. The polite term for it _kept woman,_ I think. She don’t do much workin’, not outside of Dutch’s place.” 

“Ah. The lady of the house, huh?”

“She certainly thinks so, but she’s nice enough. Just… sheltered, I guess. She an’ Karen will probably go at it at least once tonight, but don’t worry, they’re pretty good about avoiding collateral damage.”

“I’m reassured,” Charles said dryly.

“Don’t worry,” said Arthur again, knocking his shoulder against Charles’s. “She don’t bite, an’ you know most everyone else now. It’ll be fine.” 

“Sounds like you’re trying to convince more than just me.” Charles was definitely amused now, his eyes sparkling. 

“There’s about twenty of us an’ we’re all terrible people,” Arthur said. “It can be--we can be a lot. For ordinary folks.” 

“ _Twenty_ of you?” Charles said, distracted. Arthur caught him trying to count all the folks he knew on his fingers and tried not to be stupidly charmed. 

“Me, John, Dutch, Hosea, Lenny, Micah, Bill, Javier, Pearson, Sean, Susan, Kieran, Karen, Tilly, Mary-Beth, Molly, Abigail, an’ Jack. Oh, an’ Uncle. Always forget about Uncle.” Arthur rattled everyone off in quick succession, smiling a little as Charles stared, brow furrowing, trying to listen to the list of names and pick out who he’d forgotten. 

“Jesus.” 

“I know,” said Arthur. “Used to be even more of us, if you can believe it, but like I said, not everyone could make it settled down here in Valentine. Some folks just kinda… drifted away.” 

Or died in fiery, drunken crashes on the highway, but Arthur didn’t feel like bringing _that_ up. 

“So it’ll be a full house tonight, huh?”

“When Dutch is offering to wine an’ dine everybody, yeah, usually is,” Arthur admitted. “We’re not ones to turn down free food.” 

Charles clutched his pan of beer cheese a little tighter. Arthur’d made a few big aluminum trays of potato salad, a specialty of his that he’d picked up from just about the only foster mother he’d actually liked. Arthur made it every year and it always got eaten. “Do we have enough to offer?” Charles asked.

“We’re bringin’ more than most will,” Arthur assured him. “The younger boys won’t bring shit. Hosea’s usually got everyone covered, though. He ain’t got no one else to spend his money on.” 

Arthur hesitated. Charles definitely drank, Arthur knew that much, but as Arthur didn’t really do any other drugs, aside from the occasional hit off a joint with Javier or John, he wasn’t sure how Charles felt about anything harder. 

“Some’a the other boys might, uh, bring some other things,” Arthur said, carefully. “Hosea banned the hard shit after last year--don’t ask--but usually some folks wanna drop acid or somethin’. There’s definitely gonna be some weed. Marston’s somethin’ of a connoisseur.”

Charles pulled a face, but shrugged. “I don’t smoke,” he said. “But I’m not bothered. You’d be surprised how many long-haulers pop West Coast turnarounds to stay awake.” 

Arthur shook his head. “Dutch an’ Hosea don’t tolerate none of that shit,” he promised. “Never have. Bill came in all coked up once an’ I thought Dutch was gonna turn him out then an’ there. Naw, the worst folks’ll try an' bring is ecstasy, but usually it’s just acid. Peyote once, but it made John all paranoid an’ nobody wants to deal with _that_ shit again.” 

A paranoid John Marston was a John Martson who threw punches at anything that moved, and despite the fact that John was a reedy, underfed motherfucker who’d never managed to put on the muscle under Hosea’s care like Arthur had, John could hit _hard._

Charles chuckled. “Peyote ain’t for white boys,” he said. 

Arthur snorted. “You can say that again.” Arthur’d dropped acid a time or two, since he’d grown up with a pair of hippies in the nineteen seventies, but he’d never really enjoyed it and he had the sense to steer clear of coke and meth. Arthur’d seen plenty of folks lose their minds to cocaine and he had no desire to be one of them. 

“I’ll be fine,” Charles assured Arthur.

“Good,” said Arthur. “I’ll make sure everyone’s fine to you, too. You wanna drive?” Balancing two sheets of potato salad, the beer cheese and Charles would be a feat Arthur wasn’t sure he could manage on top of his bike. 

Charles nodded. “Sure,” he said. “If you don’t mind being cooped up.” 

“It’s only a few miles,” said Arthur. “Dutch’s right in town.” 

“Just tell me where,” Charles said. 

Arthur locked up the house and the barn, since they’d be out pretty late, and piled everything into Charles’s back seat. 

The drive down to Dutch’s place was nice and easy. Dutch had chosen a house just outside of Valentine proper, less than half a mile from the shop but with enough land to breathe easy. 

The party was already going when Charles pulled in. Dutch’s front lawn was packed with cars and motorcycles. Bill, Javier, Sadie and Micah’d all brought their bikes. John’s Jeep was there already, parked beside Hosea’s truck, and a truly decrepit old station wagon had likely brought most of the women. 

“There you are,” said Hosea, when Arthur and Charles climbed out of the Bonneville and fetched their cookout offerings. Hosea looked them over approvingly. The old man had taken up a position on the front porch, likely to watch for folks as they came in. 

Arthur could hear the music already, Javier’s guitar plucking out over the lawn. 

“We the last ones?” Arthur asked, heading up to the porch. He let Hosea examine the potato salad with a critical eye. 

“Not quite,” Hosea replied. “Lenny and Sean are still comin’ in. Just about everyone else is here, though.”

Arthur nodded. “How’s it so far?” 

“Tame enough,” said Hosea, rolling his eyes. “I’ve been checking pockets and turning any offenders over to Missus Grimshaw.”

“Uh oh,” Arthur said. “Who’s in the dog house?” 

“Three guesses.” 

“Micah,” said Arthur, and Hosea’s mouth pinched in affirmation. 

“Fool boy,” Arthur grunted.

“I confiscated all he brought,” Hosea muttered. “And he’s going to catch hell from me too, don’t you worry. But enough about that. Charles, it’s good to see you. Glad you could make it.” Hosea sounded genuinely pleased, too, which lifted Arthur’s spirits some. 

Charles smiled. “Mister Matthews,” he said, raising the dish of beer cheese. “I brought beer cheese. Just needs a few minutes in the oven, then it’s good to go.” 

“You’ve got good manners,” said Hosea, approvingly. “Better’n most of the fools I have to put up with. You ever want a change of career, Mister Smith, you come talk to me. You can have Arthur’s job and we’ll put him back to bussing tables.” 

“Hey!” Arthur protested. 

Charles laughed. “I’ll think about it,” he promised. 

“Go on, go join the party,” said Hosea. “The women’re in the kitchen, they’ll warm up the cheese for you.” 

Arthur and Charles went inside. Dutch's house was a big, drafty place, oddly divided. Half the rooms were Dutch’s, decorated sparsely, usually filled with books. The other half’s were Molly’s, done up all pretty and homey like something out of a catalog. 

The kitchen was squarely Molly’s domain. All the appliances matched and the hand towels hanging off the stove were color-coordinated. Molly was ruling over the kitchen when Arthur walked in, tending a big pot of baked beans on the stove top. Mary-Beth was with her, more able to handle Molly’s affectations than Tilly or Karen. Mary-Beth smiled at Arthur. 

“Arthur!” Molly trilled, seeing him. Her accent was even thicker than Sean’s, a County Derry brogue that rose and fell like the hills. “How’re you, then? And who’s this, yer feller?”

Arthur reddened a little to hear Charles described as _his feller,_ but he nodded, clearing his throat. “Molly, this is Charles Smith. We been seein’ each other, what, few months now?”

Charles nodded, sizing Molly up. 

“Charles, this is Miss Molly O’Shea.” 

“It’s nice to meet you,” said Charles, polite as ever. “You’ve got a lovely home.” 

Molly beamed. She was not, as Arthur’d said before, a complicated woman. She took pride in the home she’d made for Dutch, and even more pride when folk pointed it out to her. “Ach, yer too sweet. Potato salad again, Arthur?” 

“An’ beer cheese, from Charles,” Arthur added. “He’s gonna need to borrow your oven for a minute.” 

“Sure, sure,” said Molly. “You lads leave all that here, will you? Mary-Beth an’ I’ll see it tended to. Beer an’ the rest of the fellers are out back.” 

“Thanks, Molly,” Arthur said. “Mary.” He tipped his hat and showed Charles to the back door. 

Dutch’s back yard was a little more private than his front, bordered by trees planted to break the wind and offer cover from the roadways. 

The party was in full swing. Despite the lingering afternoon heat, a bonfire was roaring in the center of the yard, ringed by Javier, John, Karen, Uncle and Pearson, who were singing uproariously. 

Missus Grimshaw was tending a pig cooking over a coal bed off the patio. Micah and Bill were drinking like the world was going to end. Tilly and Abigail were off gossiping by themselves, sharing a glass of wine, while Jack was off by the treeline playing one of his solitary games underneath the branches of a pine tree. 

Arthur watched them all for a minute, his odd, cobbled-together family, and smiled. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” he told Charles honestly, before he could lose the nerve. 

It wasn’t an _I love you,_ but it was still true, and something in Charles’s eyes went soft, dropped its guard, to hear it. 

“Glad to be here,” he said, just as simply. 

“Good,” Arthur said, angling himself for the red beer coolers that lined the house. “Now c’mon, let’s get this party really started, yeah?” 

Arthur wasn’t shy by any means, just a bit of a misanthrope, but he realized, as the night went on, that Charles was a bit shy. He was quiet and reserved, though friendly enough, and avoided the louder, rowdier groups of people that formed and broke up as the evening deepened into night and the pig came off the spit, the food brought out and shared.

Despite that, though, Charles made sure to talk to everybody at least once, even Micah. Arthur watched him out of the corner of his eye, inordinately pleased with how hard Charles was trying to get along with everyone. 

Arthur helped, shooing away the noisier, more boisterous folks--mostly Karen, Sean and Micah, who wanted to flirt, embarrass Arthur and be a dick, respectively--but it all was going well enough. 

Charles seemed to take a shine in particular to Javier and Lenny.

Arthur put his hackles down and ate his fill. Charles’s beer cheese was delicious and the pig had turned out well, tender and almost sweet. Contentment welled up from somewhere in Arthur’s chest.

Arthur was leaning against the side of the house, watching the party ratchet up to drunken dancing around the fire, when Dutch found him. 

Dutch had made his rounds too, boisterous and loud as usual, encouraging folk to eat and drink and be happy. “Nearly thirty years we’ve been together,” he kept saying, clapping Hosea on the back. “Thirty years! That’s longer than some of you have been alive!” 

“Old man,” Arthur greeted, just drunk enough to tease him. Dutch had a pipe in his hand and the sweet smell of tobacco made Arthur itch for his own cigarettes. Dutch saw him patting his pocket and smiled, turning the pipe over to Arthur without a thought. Dutch was smoking just tobacco, some light, airy Cuban blend that had Arthur relaxing into it before the smoke had even left his lungs. 

“Young fool,” Dutch returned, mildly. He nodded over to Charles, who was still sitting with Javier and Lenny, playing some complicated-looking game that involved both a deck of cards and a knife. 

“He’s fittin’ in well,” Dutch remarked. 

Arthur nodded and took another hit off the pipe. “Yeah, he’s--yeah,” he said. 

Dutch chuckled. “You’re serious about this one, huh?” 

“Don’t start with me,” Arthur warned, remembering the last conversation with Dutch he’d had about this. He still couldn’t go into Seven-Eleven without blushing.

“Easy, son,” said Dutch, holding his hands up. “I’m not gonna pick on you. I’m happy for you. I am. Everybody needs somebody in this world.” 

Arthur snorted. “You an’ Molly doin’ alright?” 

Dutch grimaced and took his pipe back. “For now,” he said. 

Arthur didn’t push it, not wanting to spoil the other man’s mood. They smoked together in a companionable quiet, passing the pipe back and forth, watching the band of misfits that had started with Arthur party and have a good time. 

“Karen an’ Sean’re gonna end up in a field somewhere tonight,” Arthur remarked, watching the two. Javier was singing some sprightly waltz, _He querido volver a vivir,_ and Sean and Abigail weren't waltzing, exactly, but they were doing something slow and filthy with their hips, despite the clothes they both still had on. 

Dutch chuckled. “So’re John and Abigail,” he said. Arthur looked over and sure enough John and Abigail were sitting real close together, apparently at peace with each other for once. Arthur rolled his eyes. 

“Who’s takin’ Jack tonight?” 

“Hosea,” said Dutch. “Havin’ the boy around makes him feel young again. Or younger, anyway.” 

Arthur hummed. Dutch wanted something. Arthur could feel it, Dutch dangling something out like a lure, like Arthur was a bass watching the surface of the water. “What, Dutch,” said Arthur. 

Dutch chuckled. “Perceptive as always,” he said. “C’mon. Let’s go inside for a second. I’ve got some business to talk about.” 

Arthur agreed, shooting a look in Charles’s direction to make sure that Charles was alright. Charles was laughing, watching Lenny play their game. Arthur could leave him for a few minutes. 

Dutch took Arthur inside and Arthur tried to swallow down the sudden knot of anxiety that spiked in his stomach. Dutch’s sudden seriousness made him nervous. 

They went upstairs and around the corner into a room Dutch used as a study, covered wall to wall in books and pictures from the good old days. 

“Spit it out, Dutch,” said Arthur, as Dutch shifted around a little, blustery and false. 

Dutch sighed. “Alright,” he said. “I know you and old Hosea have been talking, Arthur. I know Hosea’s got some… doubts, about me expanding our delivery service, about picking up this moonshine deal with that feller in Strawberry. I was wondering--I need you to talk him around, Arthur,” Dutch said, abandoning pretense. 

Arthur stared at him. “If you know Hosea an’ me have been talkin’, you know I ain’t keen on any of this, Dutch,” Arthur said. “Runnin’ deliveries is fine--we been doin’ it to the local folks for years now, an’ I trust ‘em, but gettin’ tangled up in business down in Rhodes? Out in Strawberry? That’s risky, Dutch. An’ I ain’t like this moonshine thing neither.” 

“You just don’t like it ‘cause it’s Micah’s idea,” Dutch said, brow furrowing. Some of his cheer faded, replaced by a sort of wounded, building anger. 

“I don’t,” Arthur said, seeing no reason to lie. “Micah’s a dumbass, an’ he’s not known for bein’ responsible. We don’t know anythin’ ‘bout this O’Leary feller, ‘cept that he orders from us. Who else knows ‘bout his little moonshine operation? Who’s watchin’ O’Leary? Javier’s spotted two feds in the bar already. If word gets out we’re sellin’ unregulated moonshine--”

“We’re being careful,” Dutch argued, standing taller. “Arthur, it’s good business, it’s safe, I’ve talked to O’Leary myself--” 

“You cain’t trust everybody who talks to you, Dutch,” Arthur said, frustrated. “People lie, ‘specially when there’s money to be made--” 

“If you’d just _trust me_ a little, son--”

“Trust _me,”_ said Arthur, throwing his hands in the air, “I’m tryin’ to help, Dutch, but you ain’t wanna _listen_ \--”

“Is that how it is, then?” Dutch demanded, tone sharp. “You get your dick wet a few times and start doubtin’ me, start doubtin’ how much I _care_ about everyone? About what I’m tryin’ to do, for all of you?”

Arthur flinched back, startled. “No,” he said, too surprised to hide the hurt in his voice. “No, Dutch, it ain’t like that. You know it ain’t.” 

Dutch’s fierce expression softened a little. He let out a heavy breath and touched his brow, like there was something buried behind it causing him pain. “I know, Arthur,” he said, gentler. “I know. I’m just trying to look out for everybody, make sure we all can eat. I’m--I’m just stressed, is all. You’re doin’ fine, I’m doin’ fine, Hosea and Javier are doin’ fine, but the rest…” 

“Is it really that bad?” Arthur asked, still tense. He realized that he’d shrunk, a little bit, his shoulders rising up around his ears. He tried to patch up his hurt as quickly as he could. _Dutch didn’t mean it,_ he told himself. “I know Sean’s had trouble holdin’ down a place to live, but I thought the rest were doin’ alright.” 

“Karen’s hookin’ again,” Dutch said. 

“Karen always does a little hookin’.” Abigail didn’t so much anymore, Arthur knew that much--she and John were trying to make an honest go if it, though they’d been trying _that_ for almost ten years. But Karen had never stayed with any one feller long enough to want to quit making a bit of extra money sleeping around on the side. 

“She’s doin’ more than a little,” said Dutch, grimly. “She’s takin’ a few johns a night now, ‘cause if she doesn’t come up with the money somehow the repo man’s gonna come take her car. She’s not makin’ enough in tips and the monthly cut ain’t enough to cover her car payment _and_ her rent.” 

“What about the emergency fund?” Arthur asked. Dutch had kept an emergency fund separate from general profits for as long as Arthur had known him, to help out if somebody needed a loan to pay a bill or needed to go to the hospital or had any number of other emergencies and needed a bit of extra cash to make it through. 

Dutch shook his head. “Ain’t much in it at the moment,” he said. “Between the goddamn van, the shop needin’ a new heater over the winter, and that spill Javier took on the road in April, we’re about tapped out. Not to mention Micah, though he did pay me back, Arthur, before you start in on him. We usually make good money in the summertime, but we’ve added a few new mouths this year and it’s just--not enough. We _need_ more money.”

A lot of the talk Arthur had been hearing around the shop in the past few months suddenly made a lot more sense. 

“I get that,” Arthur said slowly, trying to tread carefully. “But, Dutch, we’ve--we’ve got a good thing goin’ here. I get needin’ money, but there’s gotta be a better way. A safer way. We cain’t afford to go steppin’ on toes in Strawberry or Rhodes neither.” 

Dutch threw out his arms, the mulish stubbornness back in his eyes. “Believe me, son, I am all ears,” he said. “If you can think of a way to take care of nineteen goddamn people sellin’ coffee and beer, please, share with the class.”

Arthur edged away again, wary of the hostility, the frustration, he could hear spiking in Dutch’s voice like wolf’s teeth, bared and snapping. “You know I’m not much of an ideas guy,” Arthur said. 

Dutch’s mouth twisted. “No,” he muttered, almost too low to hear. “Just a doubter of mine, it seems.”

“Dutch,” Arthur tried. “We can figure it out, Dutch. It ain’t as bad as all that.”

“I fear that it is precisely that bad, my boy,” Dutch said heavily, touching his brow again. He turned his back on Arthur. “Go on, head on back to the party. Ain’t nothin’ you can do for it, Arthur, not unless you change your mind and help me talk old Hosea around.”

“Dutch,” Arthur said. 

“Go on,” Dutch repeated, putting some bite behind it. “Enjoy yourself. Tell Charles thanks for the beer cheese.” 

Troubled, Arthur did as he was told. He knew when to fight against Dutch and when to give way, and there’d be no use fighting Dutch tonight. 

_I need to talk to Hosea,_ Arthur thought. He tried not to feel like he’d failed some test of Dutch’s, tried not to feel small and cut bare. _It’s worse than we thought._

He left Dutch to his brooding and slipped downstairs and outside, rejoining the raucous party on the lawn. Charles was currently tucked under one of Hosea’s arms, listening to the old man regale him with some tall tale or other, and they both looked so happy that Arthur didn’t want to interrupt. 

_I need a drink,_ he decided. A bit of whiskey would do him some good. 

He turned around in search of a drink and ran smack-dab into John, who had a glass pipe in one hand and a clear plastic baggie in the other. 

Arthur eyed him. John eyed him back. 

“Shit,” John said, breaking the silence first. “You look like you need to get high. Wanna smoke?” 

Arthur considered it. Charles had driven them and had said he didn’t mind. Arthur could indulge a little bit, and for whatever his many other faults John always had good weed. 

“Fuck it,” he said. “Yeah.” 

“Fuckin’ excellent,” John said, with more warmth than he’d shown Arthur in the past six months. “C’mon, let’s go around back. I don’t want Hosea seein’ us.” 

For an old hippie, Hosea was not a fan of recreational drugs, even something as mild as weed. He hadn’t outright banned marijuana among the gang or anything, not like he’d put an embargo on coke and meth, but if Hosea caught Arthur and John at it he’d look at them all disappointed-like, sad as a sunset, and then he’d get creative in making them regret lighting up where he could see. 

So Arthur let John usher him around the side of Dutch’s house, where they settled on a pair of overturned concrete blocks and got started, taking quick, furtive hits off the pipe whenever they were sure the coast was clear. 

“Shit, this is smooth,” Arthur rasped, holding smoke in the back of his throat until it burned sweetly, then letting it out in a lazy cloud. He felt the effects tugging at him after only a few hits, a loose warmth pulling at all his limbs and unwinding the tension from his shoulders. 

“‘S Northern Lights, outta ‘rado,” John said, already going mellow and nearly boneless, propping himself up against Arthur’s broad shoulder like he’d done when they were younger. Arthur’d been twenty-two when Dutch had picked John up out of what sounded like a genuine nightmare, too old and busy with his own pursuits to be that interested in the new kid now tagging around with them everywhere, but he’d done his best to knuckle under and follow along with Dutch and Hosea’s wishes and “properly bond” with his “new brother.” 

Mostly that had meant running around to keep John from getting into too much trouble whenever their little family’d settled somewhere new for a month or two, teaching John how to drive a car and ride a bike, how to cook over a campfire and find food whenever they were, and hanging around when John wanted to get high. 

Arthur had been used as a convenient hitching post more than once. 

He let John lean against him without complaining. It wasn’t worth fighting over, and besides. Maybe it was the weed talking, but it was kind of nice to be at peace with John for once. The last few months had been fractious, to say the least, and before John had run off on them he and Arthur had been close, thick as thieves and living out of each other’s pockets. 

It was nice to have a bit of that again, even if it had only come around with the help of good old Colorado grass. 

Arthur took another hit and leaned into it, bonelessness lapping at him like a tide. “Good shit,” he repeated. “Keep your dealer ‘way from Sean. He won’t leave anythin’ left for ya, if he finds out about this stuff.” 

“Way ahead of you,” John murmured. He took his bong back and sighed deeply. “So what’s got you all in a twist, huh?”

“Whatchu mean?” Arthur decided that playing stupid was the better part of valor. Dutch had welcomed John back with open arms when John had turned back up just before Thanksgiving, but that didn’t mean John should go inserting himself into Dutch’s affairs, not when Dutch was in the mood he was in. 

Arthur swiped the bong back and took another hit to forget the sharp, flashing edges of Dutch’s temper. 

“Woah, easy now,” John said, rousing himself. “Don’t take it all, ya big lunk. Two hits, call it quits.” 

“‘S not my fault you get high off the smoke,” Arthur teased. “Honestly, Marston, ain’t Abigail ever feed you? You’re bony as hell.” 

“Shaddup,” John growled. 

Arthur held up a hand in easy surrender. “Whatever you say, Marston,” he said. John settled again and Arthur let him be for a while, enjoying the steady, slow lap of a good high against his senses. Some of the other boys came sniffing around and laughed to see John cuddled up against Arthur like a puppy, Arthur with his head tipped back against the siding of Dutch’s house, but this late in the night, after so much beer and good food had gone around, nobody gave them too much shit. 

Arthur did sit up when Charles came by, hoping he hadn’t offended the other man somehow, but Charles only arched a wry eyebrow, amused, and lifted his beer in an admiring salute. Hosea was with him still, no longer regaling him stories but keeping him occupied and, most likely, scaring away the likes of Micah and Bill. 

_Gotta buy that man some nice coffee or somethin,’_ thought Arthur drowsily. _He’s a good feller._

The sky was full black by the time Arthur was able to pull himself up and out of the tide a little, regain some of his senses. It must’ve been near two or three in the morning--the party had wound down into a little ring around the bonfire, Javier with his guitar singing a sweet tune, something Arthur half-remembered from a half-dozen other nights just like this one. 

John was dead asleep against Arthur’s shoulder. 

“John,” Arthur said, jostling the younger man in the ribs with his elbow, “John, get up. ‘S late.” 

“Huh?” said John blearily. He was still riding a pretty sweet high, if the vacancy in his eyes was any indication. “Whassgoinon?”

“It’s late,” Arthur repeated, prodding John again. He took a quick headcount by the fire and was relieved to see that Charles was still there, listening as Javier sang about beauty marks and deep brown eyes. A stab of guilt lanced through him--he’d left Charles at the mercies of other people most of the night. 

_I gotta make it up to him too,_ he thought. 

“It’s late, Marston,” Arthur repeated, irritated now that John refused to untangle himself and get up. “C’mon, get up. Ain’t you got a woman to see to?”

John scowled. He did shove himself away from Arthur though, wobbling dangerously on his cement block. “I ain’t wanna talk about Abigail,” he growled. 

Arthur snorted. _That was fast._ They’d been cuddled up all sweet together just a few hours ago. “Y’all figthin’ again? I keep tellin’ you, John, you push that woman far enough and she’ll put you out for good. She’s a tiger, and she was already nicer than I would’ve been, lettin’ you back in her bed after you ran out on her and the boy.”

“Shut up about them,” John snapped, managing to get to his feet. He swayed, but stayed upright. “Just shut up, okay? You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” 

Any lingering calm left over from the weed went up like flash paper with the rest of Arthur’s temper. “The hell you say?” Arthur rumbled, low and furious. He _hated_ it when John got like this, got stubborn, got--got irresponsible, careless of Abigail, careless of Jack. “I know a fair bit more’n _you,_ I’d bet, since I was the one who had to hold everythin’ together while you were runnin’ around chasin’ tail in wherever the fuck!” 

“I wasn’t chasin’ tail!” John took a step towards Arthur like Arthur should be afraid of him, which was laughable given that Arthur was the one who’d first taught John how to throw a punch. Oh, John could fight, was a hell of a scrapper, but Arthur was bigger and stronger and meaner, and he didn’t hesitate like John did. 

Arthur bared his teeth. “What were you doin’, then?” he asked, taunting. “Makin’ your fortune? Cuttin’ your own place out in the world? How’d that go for you, Johnny?”

“You don’t get to tell me how to live my life!” 

“Somebody has to!” Arthur shot back, only distantly aware of the fact that their voices were rising now, loud and ugly. “You’re too much a fool to do it yourself. Somebody’s gotta stop you from ruinin’ your life, your kid’s life, and if it ain’t gonna be you, it might as well be--

“ _I_ _t’s not my fault your kid died!_ ” John exploded, jabbing a finger into Arthur’s chest. 

Everyone within earshot went very still. Arthur’s fury went out like a blown candle.

“You don’t get to tell me how to run my life just ‘cause you ruined yours,” John continued, ignoring the icy silence that was spreading out from him like ripples from a stone tossed into a pool. Arthur couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. There was--something roaring in his ears, something howling, but he couldn’t string together enough words to say something or even to convince his feet to move. 

“John!” Hosea snapped, breaking the silence. “That’s more than enough.”

The reprimand made John flinch, some awareness of what he’d said and done coming back to his eyes. Guilt flashed across his face. 

“Arthur,” John said, stricken. “I’m--I didn’t--”

“Ruin your own life then,” Arthur snarled, finally managing to string together enough words to spit venom. “See what I care! What any of us care! I ain’t even know why I bothered-- _family_ clearly don’t mean shit to you, does it? It ain’t even a word you know!”

“Arthur!” Now Hosea was rounding on him, blue eyes wide and shocked. But Arthur was past it, beyond it. He shook with rage. 

“Arthur,” Hosea said, stepping forward, reaching out, but Arthur couldn’t bear it. He didn’t want to be touched with kindness. He wanted-- 

He wanted--

He wanted to fucking hit something. But that wasn’t an option--the only folks around here to hit were too old or too young or too drunk. Arthur didn’t hit women and he certainly wouldn’t hit Charles. Arthur knew that he was a low, mean man, but he’d never been that low or that mean to hit someone who loved him. 

“Leave it, Hosea,” Arthur spat, and shouldered his way past all of them into the dark. 

As soon as he’d gone past the dim light of the bonfire Arthur wanted to turn around. _But I’m just so goddamn angry._ Hosea deserved better than that. _Charles_ deserved better than that, to be spoken to from the depths of Arthur’s black fury. 

He didn’t turn around. Dutch lived in Valentine and Valentine wasn’t that big. It only took a few minutes of stumbling through the dark, teeth gritted, cursing everything, before Arthur found himself at Lost Country. It was going on three in the morning by the time he got there and the bar was closed, a sign on the door proclaiming that the whole staff had the night off to celebrate. 

Arthur didn’t bother rooting around for keys. The door was a piece of shit. He just grabbed the handle, pulled hard and sharp, and the door popped out of its lock with a shrieking complaint. 

Inside the bar, Arthur breathed like a bellows. His hands shook. He wanted--he wanted to _break_ something, to smash something, glasses or plates or the tables, the windows. He wanted to rip the floor up by its baseboards. 

_But I ain’t a kid anymore._

Anger rolled through him, made him shake, made dark stars flash in front of his eyes, but he forced himself to hold still. If he touched anything he’d destroy it. 

Arthur was tired of destroying things. The realization hollowed him out. 

He was just plain tired. 

“Arthur,” said Charles from behind him, into the dark of the shuttered bar. “Are you alright?” 

“No,” Arthur said. “You should leave. You ain’t--you prob’ly don’t wanna see me like this.” 

“Do you want me to leave?”

Arthur huffed, harshly. “Always with the questions,” he growled, regretting the anger as soon as it flew off his tongue but unable to stop it, like a trigger pulled. “I don’t fuckin’ _know,_ alright? I’m--I ain’t good company like this. Ain’t gonna be good company for a minute. I’m just so--I’m so goddamn _angry.”_

“I don’t know where you got this idea,” Charles said, his voice deceptively mild, “that I don't get angry too, Arthur.” 

“Like this?” Arthur spat, gesturing at himself. His movements were jerky, shaky with rage. “Like--like a goddamn animal?” 

Charles shrugged. “Sometimes,” he said. “How d’you think I ended up in juvie? I get angry all the time.” 

Arthur snorted. “This ain’t me fightin’ at school,” he growled. 

“Neither was mine,” Charles said. “I stabbed a kid, ‘cause he was kicking a dog and I couldn’t control my temper.”

Arthur startled into silence. 

Charles arched an eyebrow at him. “I was a wild kid too,” he said. “I didn’t only do my fighting in the Army. I did six months in juvie for assault, Arthur, and was only lucky I didn’t go in for more because the kid I stabbed pulled on me too.” 

“I--oh,” said Arthur, lamely. Some of the anger went out of him then, some of the frantic, snapping energy, leaving only shame in its wake. 

“You prob’ly still ain’t wanna see this,” Arthur said, quieter now. “It ain’t--I ain’t fit t’be around, right now.” 

Charles shrugged. “I’ll leave if you want me to,” he said. “But you've gotta tell me that you want me to. Otherwise, I think you might need a listening ear more.” 

Arthur snorted, curling his lip, but didn’t tell Charles to leave. He didn’t tell Charles to leave. 

They stood in silence for a while, Charles calm and watchful, while Arthur struggled to get his breath under control, to still the shaking in his hands. His fury at John was old and well-worn by now, but it hadn’t gotten any easier to manage. 

“You wanna tell me what that was about?” Charles asked after a time, when Arthur’s breath had stopped trembling in the air between them. Charles hesitated, then pushed through. _He’s braver’n me,_ Arthur thought. “There was a kid, in your journal. You sketched him a few times. A little boy.”

Arthur fought with himself for a moment, silence expanding between them. 

“I had a son,” Arthur finally said, into the dark quiet. “His name was Isaac. He… died, ‘bout ten years back. He an’ his mama. I ain’t ever--I ain’t ever really got over it, I guess.”

“What happened?” There was no judgement in Charles’s voice. His eyes were unreadable. 

“Robbery gone bad,” Arthur said. “Gone--gone real bad. I didn’t--me an’ Eliza didn’t live together. We had a son but we weren’t husband an’ wife or nothin’. She had a little place outside of Boulder and I’d come through every few months with money for her an’ stuff for Isaac. But one day I went to visit an' they were--” 

He couldn’t say it. He’d never been able to say it, not really, not to Eliza’s family or to Dutch or even to Hosea, who’d seen more than his fair share of grief on his own.

“I wasn’t there,” Arthur continued, trying to force his voice to steady. 

“I’m sorry,” Charles said. 

Arthur snorted quietly. “Me too.” He couldn’t put the bitterness away any more than he could put his grief aside. “So’s everybody.” 

“Did you ever find out who did it?”

“No.” Arthur’d looked. Hell, Dutch and Hosea had looked too, Mrs. Grimshaw, Bill, John, Javier. But the robbery hadn’t been--it hadn’t been anybody associated with Arthur or any of the other boys. It had just been one of those things. A cruel twist of fate. A lesson. 

“Is that why you and John don’t get along?

Arthur spat, fury flickering. “We don’t get along ‘cause John’s a damn coward. Near two years ago now he lit out on us. Just packed up all his shit and left, didn’t tell me, didn’t tell Dutch, didn’t tell _nobody._ Left all of us an’ his kid high an’ dry.”

Arthur swallowed, throat working. “John was gone a year, maybe a little more. Nobody heard shit from him. Abigail thought that he’d up an’ died. They lived with me for a while, Abigail an’ Jack.” 

That had been hell on its own, living with a woman and a child again. Every time Arthur’d woken up to the sound of Jack giggling in the kitchen he’d had to roll over and stuff a fist in his mouth, grief sharp in his throat. 

“Then last November he jus’--he jus’ walked back into the bar one night, hopped behind the counter calm as you please, like it was--like it was _nothin_ ’.” 

“And that bothers you,” Charles observed. 

“Of course it fuckin’ bothers me!” Arthur shouted. He wasn’t angry at Charles, not really, but he was just-- he was just plain angry. He’d always been angry, but now it was boiling over. Spilling out, with nowhere to go but across the floor of Lost Country, with no choice but to lap at Charles’s feet. 

“Why?” asked Charles. 

Arthur threw up his hands. If Charles didn’t understand now he’d never understand. But it mattered. It did. It mattered more than Arthur had words for, more than Arthur could ever say. 

“Leavin’ Dutch an’ Hosea is one thing,” Arthur said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “But leavin’ that kid--John went through it, before Hosea an’ Dutch found him. He knows how bad it can be for a kid out in the world without his father. But he left anyway, an’ Jack--that poor kid spent four or five months askin’ where his daddy went. Then after that he was confused. Every man who showed him a bit of kindness was his daddy.” Arthur winced away from the memory, Jack reaching up for him, the word _papa?_ on his lips.

“Then once he realized none of his were his father, he just got sad,” Arthur continued. Jack was young and kids were tough, but Arthur knew firsthand how much a bad father could fuck up a kid. John had never beaten Jack, Arthur knew that, but John hadn’t been around to raise the boy either, and now that he was around he treated Jack half like a dog that could be pacified with treats and half like a stranger’s child suddenly thrust into his care. John was nice enough to the boy, but there was a distance there that anybody with eyes could see, including poor little Jack. 

“I had to deal with it,” said Arthur. “I had to--” he closed his mouth. He didn’t have the words to describe those days, Jack and Abigail moving in, taking over his bedroom, listening to Abigail cry at night. 

Arthur’d had them in his house. He’d taught Jack to ride a horse, how to fish, to to pet a dog, how to draw. 

All of the things Arthur hadn’t been able to teach Isaac he’d had to teach Jack, because John had run off and left the boy behind. 

It had hurt Arthur more than he’d ever been or would be able to say. It had hurt him watching the boy sleep, whimpering for his father in his dreams, and it had hurt watching Jack call Dutch or Javier or any of the other boys who’d come around _papa,_ any memory of his real father fading. 

Arthur shook his head. He couldn’t say it, how angry he’d been, how it had torn at him to raise Jack while John had been off in Laramie or San Diego or Portland, doing whatever he wanted while Arthur and Abigail had struggled to hold everything together in his absence. 

Abigail had eventually gotten a place of her own, a modest two-bedroom apartment above the bait and ammo shop in Valentine. Jack had eventually stopped calling every man who’d shown him kindness _daddy,_ had started to call them all _Uncle Arthur_ and _Uncle Dutch,_ though Hosea stayed _grandpa_ and Missus Grimshaw _gramma._

Arthur shook his head. He couldn’t say it. 

“My mother died when I was ten,” Charles said, into the quiet between them. Arthur looked at him, startled. He’d heard--bits of this, pieces, but Charles’s hadn’t talked so candidly about it before. “My father didn’t handle it well,” Charles continued. “My mom was Lakota. Oglala Lakota, out of Pine Ridge. My dad wasn’t, but he lived on the rez with my mom until she--until she passed.” 

“What happened?” Arthur asked quietly, trying in vain to push his own pain aside. 

Charles shrugged with one shoulder. “We don’t know for sure,” he said. “She went off the rez for work one day and just… never made it back. Her car was found on the side of the road twenty miles south of Pierre. She was just… gone. We never found a body, but she’s dead. I know she’s dead. She would have come back to us otherwise.”

“I’m sorry,” said Arthur. 

Charles half-smiled. “It is what it is,” he said. “That was twenty-some years ago. When she disappeared, my dad just. Lost it, I guess. He drank himself half to death before I was thirteen. My mom’s sisters did the best they could for me, but they had no money and the government sure wasn’t going to give them any help. Some white lady from social services came around the rez one day, saw how we were living, and took me with her. I… I think about how different my life would’ve been, sometimes, if my mother hadn’t died.”

Arthur chewed on that for a moment, turning it over in his head. 

“I wish my father hadn’t lost himself like he had,” Charles clarified. “And I understand. How hard it is, I mean. I was angry, for a long time. I was angry at my father for crawling inside a bottle. I was angry at my aunts for not fighting harder to keep me. I was even angry at my mother, because she went to Pierre and died.” 

Arthur thought about that for a moment. His own mama hadn’t had any say in living or dying. The cancer and the way Arthur's father had treated her had eaten her up before she’d even had a chance to fight it, to really, properly fight it. 

If Arthur thought about his own father at all, it was with dull anger. He tried not to think about Lyle Morgan. The man had lived too long for anybody, including himself. Nobody had raised a hand when Montana CFPS had come for Arthur--there’d been nobody to want him, not like Charles’s aunts had wanted him. 

He could understand Charles’s grief, though. 

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said. 

Charles lifted a shoulder. “I’m not--trying to say you shouldn’t be angry,” he said. “I’m not--you’ve got a right to your anger, Arthur. I can’t imagine losing a son. I can’t. It must’ve--” He stopped, cleared his throat. 

“I guess I’m just trying to say that your anger is yours,” he said. “And that you’re not going to--scare me off, or anything, but being angry. Like I said. I’m angry too, sometimes. 

Arthur thought about Charles coming back from the road hard and distant, and nodded. 

Some of the tension in Arthur’s shoulders eased. Maybe Charles couldn’t understand how twisted up inside Arthur was, about Isaac and John and all of it, but he understood what it was like to be so angry you shut yourself off from everybody around you. Charles understood that anger was sometimes like its own country, isolating and strange, lost to people who’d never had a father who beat them or a child who’d died, who’d never been abandoned or failed or thrown away.

Blindly, Arthur reached out. Usually he couldn’t bear to be touched like this, because he would lash out and try to hurt whatever touched him, but Charles--Arthur could never hurt Charles. 

Charles, trusting Arthur, stepped closer. Arthur grabbed his shirt and drew him in, desperate for--warmth, maybe, or for an anchor. For the solidity of him, and the certainty that Arthur wasn’t goddamn alone, that there was someone else in this lost, angry country with him who knew, who saw, who understood. 

Charles folded Arthur into his arms without hesitation. That strength of his, the power in his arms, surrounded Arthur from all sides. 

“It’s alright,” Charles said, understanding what Arthur needed. “I’ve got you.” 

Arthur didn’t know how long they held onto each other like that, clinging to each other like survivors of a shipwreck, like castaways who’d been years without the hope of rescue. Arthur didn’t cry or anything like that, for which he was immensely grateful--he’d unmanned himself in front of Charles enough for one night, he thought--but he did shake a little, until the shaking eased and Arthur felt the fight finally go out of his body. 

It left him exhausted, swaying, hardly able to stand. Charles pulled away a bit, looking Arthur up and down. 

“You good?” he asked. 

Arthur lifted a shoulder. “Better,” he rasped. “Jus’--tired. Sorry.” 

Charles rolled his eyes, aiming for ease, though his eyes flickered with concern. “C’mere,” he said, taking Arthur by the elbow. “Sit down. Let me make you some coffee, for once.” 

“Alright.” The fight had all gone out of Arthur, so he let Charles tip him into a bar stool and hop over the counter. Arthur thought for a moment. “I ain’t want no whipped cream or nothin’, though.” 

“No?” said Charles, eyes turning up in a silent laugh. “Might make you feel better.” 

Arthur pulled a face. “Prob’ly won’t,” he said. 

“I got you,” said Charles. “Hold on. You’ll like it, I promise.” Charles got the lights on and started puttering around. Arthur let him, wrung out. 

“Here,” Charles said, a few minutes later. He thumped a chipped coffee mug down in front of Arthur, steam curling over the edges. Arthur blinked. The coffee was hot ad black, the house roast, unadorned by anything fancy except for three squirts of caramel sauce, which were starting to sink to the bottom. 

It was then, watching a stupid little caramel smiley face dissolve and sink to the bottom of his coffee, that Arthur realized that he loved Charles too. 

“Charles,” said Arthur, looking up from the cup, and told him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: 
> 
> References to child abuse, child neglect; Arthur thinks about his childhood in more explicit detail than he has so far. His coping mechanisms are not good. References to suicide ideation, dehumanization. Direct depiction of a manipulative relationship; YMMV on whether or not Dutch is outright emotionally abusive (I'd argue that he is, in game canon, but that's another note for another time), but this chapter does feature Dutch directly gaslighting Arthur's concerns and undermining his confidence. 
> 
> I have a lot of opinions about Dutch.
> 
> Mild drug use (marijuana), references to harder drug use. Grief and lingering trauma; the argument can be made that Arthur has PTSD, but game canon isn't very clear. References to racism (Charles & Lenny), also references to the very real, very devastating practice of removing Native American/American Indian/First Nations children from their families and placing them in the foster care system, which was extremely common up through the 1970s and on many reservations continues to this day. 
> 
> This chapter is so long and so heavy in parts because I didn't want to break the tension of Arthur and Charles's second argument. Sorry if this one was rough for you! 
> 
> Now that we've reached the thematic turn, this fic's title comes from "Is There Anyone Out There?" by Delta Rae! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! See y'all next week, with a shorter chapter. I promise, for both your sakes and mine.


	8. new world: i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everybody! Happy Sunday! 
> 
> I want to thank everyone who's checked in and left a kudos, a comment, or a bookmark from the bottom of my heart; I have appreciated the response to this story more than I can say, and I hope y'all are enjoying yourselves! 
> 
> Content Warnings for this chapter: 
> 
> TW: Fire. Extremley minor character death. This chapter is rated E and does earn it. Also, this chapter features wrestling as foreplay. Everybody is consenting and thinks that wrestling as foreplay is kind of hot, actually. 
> 
> Enjoy!

They spent what little was left of the night in Charles’s hotel room. Neither of them had any desire to go back to Dutch’s place and pick up the Bonneville and neither of them wanted to stay inside Lost Country. The bar would be closed through the day, to give Dutch’s people a chance to sleep off their hangovers and pull themselves together, but Lost Country just felt--sad, without folk inside it to fill it up with noise and laughter. 

So they made their way into Charles's room at the Saints Hotel while dawn broke grey and cold through the windows. Arthur and Charles fell into bed together, the hotel room door swinging shut behind them. 

They didn’t have sex. Arthur wasn’t sure he could handle it, not like this. He’d been cut open, flayed raw, both by his fight with John and by the half-argument, half-confessional he’d had with Charles.

That had been intimacy enough for Arthur, at least for today. 

Charles didn’t complain or push. He simply tipped them over onto the bed, shed his shirt, and draped an arm over Arthur’s waist, anchoring him to the world. 

“I got you,” Charles murmured, when Arthur shifted and squirmed, trying to ease the pressure in his chest. 

Arthur settled, at that. He believed Charles. It was hard not to, not when Charles had now heard most of it, seen most of it, most of the worst Arthur could offer up, most of Arthur’s ugliness and grief, his temper, his sharp tongue. 

Charles had seen all of that and decided to stay anyway. So when he said, _I got you,_ Arthur believed him. 

_Strange, how fast that happened,_ he thought. Arthur didn’t trust easily or well. But he trusted Charles, and now Arthur’s world was turning on a different axis, was upright and steady and set on a strong foundation, like Arthur’d been living in a house that hadn’t been quite level, everything listing to one side, and Charles had come in and propped up the corner. 

Arthur slept a little, or thought he did. He drifted in and out. Light shafted across the hotel room and the smell of a hotel breakfast, rubbery eggs and dry bacon, drifted up from the lobby. Arthur woke up thirsty at one point, then rolled over to tuck his face against the hollow of Charles’s throat and forgot all about it. 

Eventually, though, Arthur did have to give in to the demands of the day and get up to piss, slouching heavy across the floor and into Charles’s tiny bathroom. 

He stuck his head in the shower while he was at it, tap turned to cold, then scrubbed the rest of himself off to get rid of the stink of the cookout. 

Charles was sitting up in bed when Arthur stepped back out, scrubbing a towel over his head. Charles’s hair had come loose somewhere between Dutch’s place and the bed. Half of it had managed to stay in the braid and the other half framed Charles’s face in sleep-rumpled waves, mussed from the pillow. 

The sheets had dug creases into Charles’s cheek.

“You smell like a barn,” Arthur said, fondly. The whole room did, really. Smelled like men, musky with sweat, and like weed, like woodsmoke and spilled beer. 

“Was a team effort,” Charles grunted, stretching. Arthur tipped his head, acknowledging the point. 

“Shower’s all yours,” Arthur said. He stepped aside, giving Charles the bathroom. “You, uh. You got any clothes I could borrow? All’a mine’r pretty rank.” 

Charles waved vaguely at the dresser. “Help yourself,” he said, jaw cracking in a yawn. 

“You clean up,” Arthur advised. “I’ll run downstairs an’ get us coffee.” 

Charles hummed and stood, making his own way into the bathroom, door shutting behind him, and Arthur crossed the room to raid the dresser. His own clothes were a lost cause, stiff with sweat and heavy with weed smoke. He was half-tempted to pitch them into the nearest trash can. 

He settled for tugging on a pair of Charles’s jeans, these ones splattered with paint instead of oil, and shrugging on a faded, frayed tee-shirt stamped with the peeling logo of a band Arthur didn’t know. He put his own boots back on and crammed his own hat back on his head, hair curling wet around his ears, and trotted downstairs to see what kind of breakfast was on offer. 

The lack of a hangover was kind of surprising. Arthur hadn’t had much to drink, that was true, but in his experience coming down off a high left him irritable and sore, twitchy and paranoid. 

_Must’a slept long enough to avoid it,_ Arthur thought, hitting the lobby and making a beeline for the coffee. _Or maybe Charles chased it off with all that talkin’ last night._ If telling folks about his dead kid staved off a hangover Arthur probably should’ve told a few more people about it and saved himself some grief, but it was probably just Charles. 

Arthur grabbed a few Styrofoam cups. There wasn’t much to eat, not really. The bacon and eggs he’d smelled from upstairs were entirely unappetizing, congealed and gooey in a way Arthur really didn’t like. He left it all, filling up two cups, shoving a handful of sugar packets and little tabs of coffee creamer into his pocket, and went back upstairs. 

Charles was still in the shower, so Arthur left one cup and his little hoard of sweeteners on top of the dresser and left again, this time heading for the upper porch to drink his own coffee and let the sunshine wake him up a little more. 

The Saints Hotel had two porches; a lower one on the ground floor and then the upper porch, which was little more than a glorified landing with a few tables and chairs shoved into a corner, some stairs leading down into the street. 

Arthur didn’t bother sitting. He leaned against the railing, watching the town below, and enjoyed his coffee in long, slow sips. It was shit coffee, but the view was alright. 

From up here, Valentine was almost cute. Quaint. Arthur couldn’t see the peeling varnishes and cracked windows from up here, not like he could down in the street. From high enough up Valentine was charming, old-fashioned, its storefronts all facing each other in neat rank and file, its houses vintage instead of derelict. The backdrop was pretty enough too, all young forest, hills and trees, the Grizzlies looming blue in the distance. 

_Still smells like cow shit, though._ There wasn’t much to be done about that, so Arthur tried not to hold it against Valentine. Every place needed an industry of some kind, and livestocking wasn’t as dishonest an industry as some others. 

Valentine was quiet on Sunday mornings, since most of the town was packed into the battered church that hunkered over the town’s eastern side one road up and over from Keane’s, so Arthur was able to drink his coffee in utter peace, the quiet only broken by a hawk screaming as it wheeled up in the sky and a battered Harley Fatboy rumbling around the corner, disappearing with a flash of green. 

“There you are,” said Charles from behind Arthur, and Arthur popped up off his elbows, turned to face the other man. 

_He looks better,_ Arthur thought, eyes flickering over Charles. Charles’s hair was still loose, but the shower had straightened it out some and had given it back its raven’s-wing shine. Charles had scrubbed away the dirt and general miasma of last night, too, and had swapped his clothes for a clean button-down and jeans, which he’d cuffed and tucked into his boots. He was clutching his cup of coffee tightly, the corners of his eyes still fuzzy with sleep.

“Here I am,” Arthur agreed, smiling a little. Charles smiled back and took a deep gulp of his coffee, wincing at either the taste--it was not good coffee--or the temperature. 

“I was starting to think you’d run off,” Charles said, tone light though his voice was gravelly and rough. 

Arthur could empathize. Despite the coffee and the cold shower, Arthur felt like he’d swallowed rocks. “Naw,” he said, simply. There were half a hundred things Arthur could say but as he flicked through each of them in his head, every one sounded stupider, hollower and more ridiculous than the last. So he settled on what was true. “You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.” 

Charles dipped his head, taking that for what it meant. “Good,” he said, just as simply. “Now c’mon. I’m starving, and the food here sucks.”

Arthur smiled into his coffee cup. 

They had breakfast at Smithfield's, since it was about the only place open that served more than rubbery eggs and gas station sandwiches. Arthur had a plate of bacon and a bowl of cracked wheat and Charles had a mountain of pancakes swimming in butter and syrup. Arthur stole several forkfuls of Charles’s plate and in turn let Charles make off with most of Arthur’s toast. 

The food was good, if overpriced, and Arthur grudgingly had to admit for the first time in six years that maybe Smithfield's was on to something. 

Still, he’d liked breakfast at that shitty diner in Bacchus Station, too, for all that the coffee had been sludge and the food entirely inedible. Maybe it was just that Arthur liked breakfast with Charles; in Charles’s company the food didn’t matter, because Charles was what Arthur really needed. 

The thought was silly and frilled, flickering between Arthur’s ears like a bit of lace tossed in the wind. He caught it and tucked in away for later inspection--he didn’t need to get all sappy now, in the middle of Valentine’s biggest tourist trap, wearing Charles’s clothes and carrying finger-shaped bruises low on his hips. 

_A man has to have his pride,_ Arthur thought wryly. Charles shifted, reaching across the table to steal another bite of toast, and his shirt rode down to reveal a dark hickey laid flush over his collarbone. Arthur’s heart thrilled. 

_A little pride, at least._

They paid and left together, wrists and hips and elbows bumping as they made their way out of Smithfield's and back into the street. 

“I need to pick up the Bonneville,” Charles said, cutting Arthur a glance. “It’s still at Dutch’s place.” 

Arthur understood what he was really trying to say--Charles needed to pick up the car, but he didn’t want Arthur to run into John and get all riled up again. Arthur snorted and checked his watch. It was only half-past eight, still early enough. Parties at Dutch’s tended to go until dawn, and the recovery from said parties often took the rest of the following day. 

“Ain’t nobody up over there,” he said, offering Charles a crooked well-what-are-you-gonna-do smile. “Nobody ‘cept old Hosea, maybe, and he’ll let me be. Gettin’ the Bonneville’s no big deal.” 

“We’ll be quick,” Charles promised. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “I’m a big boy, Charles,” he said. In the light of day, come down off the whiskey and the weed smoke, Arthur was able to be more even keel about it all. “John an’ I fight like cats an’ dogs,” Arthur said. He shrugged a little, spread his hands. “Been like that since we was boys. He’s always gonna say some shit that’ll piss me off.”

“He did more than piss you off,” said Charles, evenly.

Arthur chuckled even as his heart swelled to have such a staunch defender. “Yeah, well. You ain’t got any brothers, right?”

Charles shook his head. 

“Any cousins you’re real close with? Boys who went through the shit right with you.”

“One or two,” Charles allowed, oddly guarded. Arthur just nodded, content to leave Charles the secrets he wanted. 

“Me an’ John are like that,” Arthur said. “We been through it. He knows how to--how to cut at me better’n anyone else, and he can. He will. But he’s my brother. Still gonna let him ruin his own life, ‘f that’s what he wants,” Arthur added, catching the look in Charles’s dark eyes. “I meant what I said last night--I’m through tryin’ to make John want the things a good man oughta want. I’m through tryin’ to get him to grow up. He wants to wreck his own life, wreck Abigail’s, that’s fine. I’ll be there when the dust settles.”

“What about their son?” Charles asked. They rounded the corner at the Saints Hotel, headed for the south side of town where Dutch’s house and Lost Country lay waiting.

Arthur winced. “Jack… well. He ain’t my kid. I cain’t take him, an’ I wouldn’t, not from his mama. I hope--I hope John comes ‘round an’ pulls his head outta his ass ‘fore he does more damage to that boy, but there ain’t nothin’ I can do, ‘cept give the boy my own attention when I’m near him. Be a good uncle to him.

“He’s young,” Arthur continued, strongly, though he wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince himself or Charles. “He’s not six yet. There’s still time for Jack.” 

Charles tipped his head, conceding the point. All of the shit that had happened to Arthur and Charles as boys had been in their later years when they’d been older, less resilient to change. Young kids could bounce back from all kinds of terrible shit. Arthur’d seen it happen. 

Jack Marston would be fine. His mama would make sure of that, if nothing else. 

Dutch’s house came into view as they walked down the street together and passed the last of Valentine proper, leaving the clapboard and dust behind for the slim glimpse of privacy offered by Dutch’s trees. 

Charles’s Bonneville was right where he’d left it, parked in the front yard off the drive. It didn’t look like too many folks had moved out after last night’s fire and drama; John’s Jeep was gone, which made a knot of anxiety Arhur’d been hiding from Charles loosen in his chest, and so was Hosea’s old pick-up, but near everybody else was still here, looked like, crashed inside or passed out in the back. 

Arthur squinted at the front porch and snorted. Uncle was laying stone unconscious in front of the door like a particularly ugly guard dog, and for some reason he was plumb naked.

 _Discretion’s the better part of valor there,_ Arthur decided. Somebody else could deal with the drunks and fools scattered all over Dutch’s property. Arthur had done enough babysitting. 

He climbed into Charles’s car and they went back home together, the wind ruffling Arthur’s hair. Charles kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other on Arthur’s knee. 

It was nice. Strange, still, this easy, unthinking intimacy, a new world that Arthur hadn’t even considered might exist, but it was nice. 

_An’ I’m gonna enjoy it,_ he thought determinedly, tipping his head back to rest against the seat, closing his eyes against the sun. _John fuckin’ Marston be damned._

  
  


\---

“Listen, Arthur,” Hosea said, pulling Arthur aside the next time Arthur went into work. A few days had come and gone since the party and Charles had stayed at Arthur’s place for all of them. 

Arthur scowled. It was four-fifteen in the morning and he wasn’t in the mood for either Hosea’s apologies or his lecture, whichever the old man felt like dishing out. 

Judging by the wide, worried look in Hosea’s eyes, he was feeling like an apology. 

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, Hosea,” Arthur said gruffly. “‘S fine. We ain’t need to talk it over or nothin’.” 

“It’s not fine,” Hosea insisted. He touched Arthur’s elbow with two fingers, a little grounding touch he’d developed when Arthur’d been a wild boy with a wild temper. Arthur scowled. “John was out of line.” 

“Ain’t he always?” 

Hosea grimaced. “More out of line than usual, then.” 

Arthur shrugged, still scowling. He was pissed at John, there was no hiding that. He’d meant what he’d said to Charles, that John had always known how to prick and poke at Arthur better than anyone else alive, and that Arthur intended to be there and watch out for John despite it all, because that’s what loyalty was, but he was still pissed. 

There were better ways to tell Charles about Arthur’s dead kid. Screaming about Isaac in the middle of a party wasn’t one of those ways. “I meant what I said,” Arthur grumbled, half a growl. “If he wants t’be an idiot an’ ruin his own life, fine. I ain’t his father, an’ he ain’t my responsibility. I’m done tellin’ him what to do.” 

Hosea sighed, pained, but instead of arguing like he usually would, he just touched Arthur’s elbow again, lightly, and said, “You’ve got the right, if that’s what you want.” 

Arthur looked down at the old man, startled. 

Hosea’s mouth twisted. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “Arthur, I love John, you know I do. There’s--there’s a great man in there somewhere, underneath all his bluster and stupidity. _But,_ ” he added, when Arthur snorted derisively and tried to pull away, “none of us can make John decide to _be_ that man. Not you, not me, not Dutch. Not even Abigail, bless her heart. That woman oughta be canonized.

“No,” Hosea continued, “only John can decide what kind of man he wants to be, and lately he ain’t been a very good one. He’ll come around, I think. Eventually.”

“Doubt it,” Arthur muttered. John was the sort to need to hit rock bottom before he started looking up, and John wasn’t nowhere near rock bottom yet. He’d have to crash and burn in spectacular fashion to turn his shit around. Hosea rolled his eyes. 

“He’s still young, Arthur,” Hosea reminded him, gently. “That don’t excuse the way he spoke to you--twenty-eight’s more than old enough to know better, when it comes to talking about another man’s grief--but that’s still young. Remember what you were like at twenty-eight?” 

Arthur grunted. He’d been a damn fool, but he still hadn’t walked out on his kid. 

“At twenty-eight I was fresh from the front,” Hosea pointed out. “The shit I did trying to make myself feel human again, some of it was downright stupid, Arthur. Most of it was, really.” He paused, chuckled at an old memory.

“Remember Dutch when he was twenty-eight? You were what, seventeen, eighteen back then?” 

“You had your hands full with us, that’s for damn sure,” Arthur admitted, reluctantly. Arthur’d followed Dutch around back in those days like a puppy, haring after him into all sorts of trouble, and trouble had been just about the only thing Dutch had been interested in. 

_I still do that, a little,_ Arthur thought, but Dutch was near two decades older now, and the trouble they could get into these days wasn’t quite so bad. 

“I did,” Hosea said, rolling his eyes again. “But you turned out alright, you and Dutch both. Good men, the both of you. I pulled myself out of it when I was that age, with Bessie’s help. John’ll get there too. He just needs to--I don’t know, figure that out for himself. He’s gotta _want_ to be a good man, not hear that he needs to be from other people. He’s stubborn like that.” 

Arthur sighed. The mention of Dutch had brought the memory of the cookout swimming to the surface of Arthur’s thoughts, Dutch spitting fire, waspish and wounded. Arthur’s stomach tightened unhappily. 

“Hosea,” he said, steering the conversation away from John for a minute. “About Dutch.” 

Hosea’s eyes sharpened. “You speak to him?” 

“Yeah,” said Arthur. His lip curled. “He ain’t wanna listen to me either, Hosea. He’s--I don’t know.” Dutch was scaring Arthur, is what he was. The last time Arthur had seen Dutch this raw, this _mean,_ bitter and determined and ready to take a swing at the entire world, had been right after Annabelle had died. 

He told Hosea as much, skirting around the exact words Dutch had said to him, which had settled into Arthur’s stomach like barbed hooks. 

Hosea whistled, expression dark and troubled. “That was a bloody season,” he said, referring to those black, bleak months after Annabelle had passed. Dutch’s temper had been a wildfire just wanting for a spark, hot and dry and howling, and Dutch hadn’t cared who got burned up in the inferno.

“Yeah, well,” said Arthur. “I dunno. He’s got--he’s got somethin’ to prove, I think. Or I think _he_ thinks, if that makes sense. Folks’re really strugglin’, I guess. Anybody come to you for help?”

“A few,” Hosea said. He rubbed his chin. “Javier needed help paying off his hospital bills from that accident he took last spring. I’ve helped Abigail out with school fees for Jack. That Kieran boy has about five dollars to his name at any given time, so I’ve been feeding him when he’s not looking, and Uncle’s borrowed a bit off me to cover his alimony checks. I don’t know who’s been talking to Dutch, though.” 

“Karen, for sure,” Arthur said. He grimaced. “I guess she’s hookin’ again.” 

“She always does a little hookin’.” 

“Seriously hookin’, I mean. Pickin’ up two or more johns a night, Dutch said. An’ Sean’s homeless again, owes god knows how much money to the Saints Hotel. I had him up at my place last week, but he weren’t in’erested in stickin’ around. He’s crashin’ with Lenny for now, I think.” 

“That boy’s good with his money,” Hosea said, meaning Lenny. Nobody could look at Sean and think that he had any sense, financial or otherwise, between his fool ears. “He oughta be alright.” Hosea sighed. 

“How’re the books lookin’?” asked Arthur. “I guess I didn’t realize we were doin’ quite so bad. Seems like we’re always busy to me, ‘least at night. Javier told me, ‘bout a month ago now, that everybody was comin’ up a few hundred dollars ahead every paycheck. An’ the deliveries have picked up too.” 

“So’s our licensing fee,” Hosea said, darkly. “And our permitting fees with the county, plus the monthly cut we give the deputies to look the other way on all the hookin’ and underage drinking that goes on ‘round here. Dutch thinks--well, he thinks a lot of things, but he’s worried the town’s trying to price us out. Raise our fees up so high that we gotta fold.”

“Why?” Arthur asked, baffled. “We bring in good money for the town.” 

“That’s just it,” said Hosea. “Tourism’s picking up in Valentine. All the folks who ain’t wanna shell out a couple grand to stay a week in Jackson Hole are coming here. We’re a cheap watering hole. If we’re out of the way, where do folks have to go to get a drink?”

“Fuckin’ Smithfield's,” Arthur muttered, catching on. “That why Dutch wanted to, uh, _franchise?_ He wanted to make sure that if we get priced outta Valentine, we’ve got somewhere else to go?”

Hosea shrugged. “That or he wants to make sure we’ve got enough cash to get on the road again,” he said. “He’s not real sure, not even in his own head--Dutch changes his mind every goddamn time I talk to him.”

“Where the hell would we go?” Arthur asked, surprised to hear that the road was an option. 

_We’ve been here six years._ It had been hard at first, that was true. It had been difficult to settle, to get used to staying in the same town month after month and season after season. But they’d built a life here, all of them. It’d be no easy thing to uproot all of that. 

“I have no idea,” Hosea said. “And Dutch doesn’t either, not for all his bluster about it. There’s just too many of us now.” 

“An’ the problems we had that made us _wanna_ settle down somewhere quiet ain’t gone away,” Arthur pointed out. “Not the least of which is payin’ for twenty-odd folks t’live on the road.” 

That shit cost _money,_ real, significant amounts of money. Money for hotels and motels, money for gas, money for food, money to patch up their bikes and cars, money to smooth out the tensions that arose when small-town cops caught sight of fifteen men in beat-up cars and motorcycles bearing down from the highway. 

“I’ve told him that, believe it or not,” said Hosea. He shrugged helplessly. “But Dutch’s got this idea in his head that--I don’t know. I don’t,” he added, when Arthur’s expression shifted from concern to outright alarm. “I really don’t know what he’s thinking. Only that it’s not good, and it’s going to come back around and bite us in the ass, and soon.” 

“It’s Micah,” Arthur growled. “He’s been fillin’ Dutch’s head with stories of the glory days--which he weren’t even _there_ for--and makin’ Dutch miss the years where he could stick his hand in his pocket an’ bring up fifty grand.” 

Hosea snorted softly. “That was the eighties,” he said. “The new century’s coming. The money’s all on the Internet now. In the stock market, in the insurance companies. It’s not with us, not with our kind, our way of life. Not unless we decided to give up all of this entirely and start robbin’ banks or something, but I hear even that’s not very lucrative anymore. All the money’s in casinos now.” 

“So what d’you wanna do?” Arthur scratched the back of his neck. “Dutch ain’t gonna turn aside, not now. Not with folks goin’ hungry or hearin’ the repo man knockin’ at their door. He is right, at least a little. We need more money.” 

Hosea shook his head. “I’m not sure yet,” he said. “I’ve taken Micah off the night shift, to try and limit his influence on Dutch. You’re back on nights,” he added, as Arthur opened his mouth. 

Arthur closed it again. “Oh,” he said. “Really? What changed your mind?” 

“John,” said Hosea. “We got a little off track here, but what I was trying to tell you was that you’re off mornings and John’s on ‘em. Give you two a little breathing room.” 

Arthur wasn’t going to argue with _that,_ and if it meant that Micah and Dutch weren’t in the building together at the same time, all for the better. 

“He ain’t gonna listen to me, Hosea,” Arthur warned, referring to Dutch. “He’s got himself set on this road, wherever it’s gonna take us, and he ain’t gonna let me pull him off of it.” 

Hosea rubbed his forehead, but managed to muster up a rueful smile. “Then we’ll all just tuck our chins in and get on with it, I guess. Still, I trust you to rein in Dutch’s wilder schemes better than Micah. This moonshine business is just stupid.” 

“I’ll do what I can,” Arthur finally agreed, with a shrug. He hesitated. “You ain’t gotta take John off nights,” he said gruffly. “I’m a big boy, I can handle spendin’ time with his ugly mug.” 

“Abigail’s not very happy with him either,” Hosea said. “I guess they’d already gotten into it at the cookout _before_ John got high and took his temper out on you, then she heard about what John said and really laid into him. He’s been stayin’ with me, the last few days.” 

Arthur raised an eyebrow. “You oughta start chargin’ folks rent,” he said. “Your place is turnin’ into a regular old hostel, old man.” 

“Oh, believe me, John’s paying for it,” Hosea promised, a wicked gleam in his bright blue eyes. “And he’s not even complaining that much. From what I’ve heard, Abigail stripped the skin off him for what he said to you. She’s not forgotten what you did for her and the boy, Arthur.” 

Arthur softened a little. “Naw,” he said. “She’s good people, Abigail. Better’n me, that’s for sure.” 

“Don’t sell yourself short, son,” said Hosea warmly. “You turned out alright, somehow.”

“You’re gonna make me blush, old man,” Arthur said, but he smiled. “I’m fine, Hosea, really. John ain’t said shit to me that I ain’t said to myself a hundred times before.” 

“Doesn’t mean he should’ve said it,” Hosea replied, steadily. “John was around when--when you lost your son,” he continued, choosing his words carefully. “He saw how badly it hurt you.”

“No he didn’t,” Arthur disagreed. John had a lot of faults, Arthur was the first one to admit that, but he hadn’t seen how torn up Arthur’d been in those first few months after Isaac and Eliza’d passed. “I didn’t show him. I didn’t--didn’t talk about it. Didn't even mention their names around him again, not then and not since.” 

“He was there, though,” Hosea said, not quite understanding why Arthur was sticking up for John in this or all things, when Arthur’d been quick to point out John’s every other fault and flaw in the months since John had come back. 

“He was eighteen,” said Arthur. “The only things he cared about where his dick an’ his bike, which I cain’t blame him for, ‘cause I only cared about my bike when I was eighteen too. I don’t know if he even _met_ Isaac. You an’ Dutch came with me a time or two, but John--he weren’t ever really in’erested. Cain’t blame him, really. He didn’t understand why anybody livin’ our kind’a life would wanna have a kid.”

“Mm,” Hosea said. He and Bessie had been together for years, Arthur remembered, but there’d never been any kids come from it. Dutch and Annabelle hadn’t had any children of their own blood either, nor had Dutch and any of the other women he’d bedded down with. Dutch and Hosea had picked up a fair few kids, of course, taken them in and raised them as their own, but scooping a feral teenager off the streets or out of some basement hellhole was different. Teenagers could more or less look after themselves, for one thing. Babies were helpless. 

“You ever think about tryin’ again?” Hosea asked. 

Arthur scoffed. “Naw,” he said. “Not really. Didn’t do such a good job the firs’ time around to wanna try again. The horses’re enough for me. ‘Sides,” he added, mostly just to stave off whatever soft, sentimental shit Hosea was gonna say about second chances, “me an’ Charles ain’t exactly got the right equipment, if you ain’t noticed.” 

“Oh?” One of Hosea’s white eyebrows went up. He wanted to pry, Arthur could tell. He closed his mouth deliberately, made Hosea work for it. “Things are serious between you two then, huh? I’d wondered.” 

“Yeah,” Arthur admitted, quietly. “They’re, uh. Pretty serious.”

“I’d wondered,” Hosea said again. At Arthur’s sideways look, he smiled faintly. “You didn’t see the way Charles was looking at John after you stormed off,” Hosea explained. “I thought he was gonna start swinging. He went off after you in a hurry, too, and you usually don’t bring folks around the shop or Dutch’s place to meet everybody. I figured if you’d brought him by not once but twice, you’d fixed your heart on him pretty good.” 

“It ain’t like we’re married'r nothin’,” said Arthur, but Hosea wasn’t wrong. It warmed Arthur, the thought of Charles punching John in the face on Arthur’s behalf. 

“You don’t have to be, to be in love with somebody,” Hosea pointed out. “Bessie and I never married, not officially.”

“If it ain’t official it ain’t really a marriage,” Arthur said. 

Hosea rolled his eyes. “Since when have you needed the government to give you any legitimacy?” he said, the old hippie in him rising. “A marriage certificate’s just a piece of paper.”

 _He’s got a point there,_ thought Arthur, most of whose government documents were forged or faked. He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “We didn’t, uh, promise each other forever or nothin’,” he said. “That’s what I meant. We ain’t--we ain’t made each other no vows.” He shied away from even _thinking_ about that conversation, how hard it’d be to say, to get out of his mouth. 

“But you’re serious about this feller, aren’t you?” Mirth sparkled in Hosea’s eyes. Arthur scowled. The old man knew damn well that Arthur was serious about Charles. He was just having his fun, now. 

Given the way the past few weeks had gone, Arthur was inclined to let him. Hosea deserved a good laugh or two. “I am,” he said. He lifted his chin. 

“Well, good,” said Hosea, clapping Arthur on the shoulder. “‘Cause I like him. I’ll be glad to see more of him. He’s a smart man, your Charles. Well-read.”

Inordinately pleased with Hosea’s blessing, Arthur went about the rest of the day with a spring in his step, especially since he didn’t have to see either Micah or John. Hosea gave him a day in the shop without any deliveries, having sent John, Lenny and Kieran out already, so Arthur settled himself in behind the counter and spent a pleasant few hours sipping coffee and sketching idly in his journal, half-listening to Mary-Beth and Hosea chattering in his ear. 

Javier came in at ten for the mid-shift and helped Arthur man the lunch crowd, which amounted to five or six gossipy old ladies and one family of four who’d pulled off the highway looking for a bathroom and a bite to eat. 

The old ladies tittered over Arthur, charmed by his manners. The family of four was loud and messy, but the father tipped well, looking harassed, and the mother mopped up the youngest kid’s spilled apple juice as best she could so that Arthur didn’t have to, which made Arthur tolerant enough of the noise. 

“Night shift starting tomorrow, Arthur,” Hosea reminded him at the close of the day, as Arthur split the tips and grabbed his keys. He’d only split the tips five ways, leaving himself out, and he thought he’d been smooth enough about it that the others wouldn’t notice. Hosea never took tips anyway, since his name was on the building’s lease and his share of the profits was bigger. “Don’t forget.” 

“Aw, I won’t,” Arthur said, flicking two fingers at the old man in a cheerful salute. “It’ll be good t’be back on nights. I missed it.” 

He’d come to like the quiet of the morning shift well enough, these last few months, but it’d be nice to sleep in past the dark of the morning. 

He’d have to tell Charles. Most of their current plans revolved around Arthur getting off at one or two in the afternoon and having the rest of the day to themselves. Arthur going into work at four and staying through last call would change things up a little bit. 

Arthur had the sneaking suspicion that Charles wouldn’t mind all that much, though. Confronted with their talks in the last few weeks, with the fire in Charles’s voice, with his conviction, Arthur was forced to admit that Charles had been serious--for some unfathomable reason he loved Arthur, and was happy to spend time with him. 

Arthur rode home turning that thought over in his head. Charles would be gone for a few days yet, down in Cholla Springs again. 

_We’ll talk about it when he gets back,_ thought Arthur, turning his thoughts towards all the household chores that needed doing. _It’ll be nice to enjoy my mornin’s with him, at least._

Over the next few days, Arthur made the adjustment back to his nights, feeding the horses back at their usual time, tending to the house in the morning and afternoon, heading in at the evening hours. 

Reliance was doing well enough that Arthur took her out for short little walks around the paddock a few times a day, encouraging her to keep her strength up, though she was still on stall rest. 

The evening shift fell back into place like Arthur’d never left. The rodeo’d left town and nights were back to mostly the local crowd, the tension that had simmered over Lost Country bleeding off without a bunch of rowdy, horny out-of-towners around to stir up bad feelings. 

Arthur did like the night shift better, and even on his days off John didn’t come around to antagonize Arthur any. 

“John’s avoiding you,” Abigail explained one night, voice pitched to rise above Javier's bitching. Apparently some jackass on a Harley had tailgated him for fifteen miles on the morning run and he was still pissed about it. “‘Cause I told him if he ever upset you like that again, I’d skin him raw.” 

Arthur chuckled. “‘Preciate it, Abby,” he said, and she swatted him with a towel. 

The only thing that didn’t slot neatly back into place was Arthur’s sleep. He’d gotten used to having Charles beside him, it seemed, and without Charles around his sleep was fragmented and shallow. He startled awake several times a night hearing the horses in their fields or a motorcycle rumbling in the distance, roll over to find that he’d reached for Charles in his dreams. 

Still, a week went by well enough and before Arthur knew it, Charles was coming back into Valentine again, Bonneville bouncing up the drive while Arthur drank on the porch. The sun was low and red, nine o’clock come and gone, and Arthur had missed Charles a fair bit more than he’d even thought possible. 

_Alright, you big idiot,_ he told himself, palms sweaty. _You practiced in the mirror. You prepared. All you gotta say is,_ Charles, you wanna move your shit outta the Saints an’ into my place? _That’s it. You ain’t gotta be weird about it._

He’d been working up the nerve to ask Charles to move in with him all day, since Charles spent most of his time in town at Arthur’s place anyway. 

He stood up as Charles pulled up, raised a hand as Charles climbed out. 

Then he caught sight of Charles’s face and the question died on Arthur’s lips. 

The stormcloud was back, the strange, distant expression Charles had worn after his long haul out to California. Charles held himself rigidly, tight, tension wound across his shoulders and his hands. 

_Somethin’ happened to upset him,_ Arthur realized. He bit his lip, suddenly unsure. 

“Hey,” he said, mustering a smile. 

Charles looked at him with eyes that were a thousand years and a thousand miles away. 

“Charles,” said Arthur, concerned now, hopping down off the porch and taking a tentative step towards the other man. “Charles, it’s me. You alright?”

Charles twitched at the motion, his hands balling up into fists before he could seem to quite stop himself. “Don’t,” he managed to get out. Some of the distance in his eyes ebbed, but the tension holding him tighter than bear trap didn’t. 

Charles shook his head, hair spilling out from under the edges of his cap. “I’m sorry,” he managed. “I’m--just give me a second. I’m fine. It’s fine.” 

“Charles,” said Arthur quietly, making sure to give the other man enough space, hands up and out. “Charles, what d’you need?” 

“I need to hit something!” Charles exploded, eyes flashing black fire. He shrank back as soon as he’d shouted it, hands curled into fists at his side, shame crossing his handsome face. “Sorry,” he said. He winced, throat raw, shame prickling at him. “I’ll just, uh, go,” he said. He looked up, met Arthur’s startled gaze for a second, skipped his eyes away. “I shouldn’t--I shouldn’t be here, not like this. I’ve had a--a bad few days, is all. I’ll go back to the hotel and sleep it off, we can try again tomorrow.” 

“Wait,” Arthur blurted, stepping forward before he could stop himself even as Charles’s shoulders tensed. Arthur could see the fight in him now, the long, snapping line of it, anger and violence held tightly in Charles’s hands. 

Charles looked at Arthur again. 

“Wait,” Arthur said, ordering his thoughts. He’d been surprised by Charles’s outburst, because Charles was usually so damn _quiet,_ but he could still help. “Wait,” he said, a third time, and took another tentative step closer. Charles glared at him but didn’t pull away, his hands still wound into fists. 

“I can help,” Arthur said earnestly. “Fightin’--that’s somethin’ I can help with. You wanna hit somethin’? Hit me.” 

Charles stared at him, horrified. “I’m not gonna hit you,” he half-shouted. 

Arthur waved an impatient hand. “Not like _that,_ Charles. I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout standin’ here an’ lettin’ you whale on me or nothin’. I ain’t even talkin’ ‘bout boxin’ with you, ‘cause I’m pretty sure you’d beat my ass.”

“What _are_ you talking about, then?” Charles demanded, still staring at Arthur like he’d thought Arthur had gone crazy. 

“I dunno,” Arthur admitted. He hadn’t quite gotten that far, but he was determined to try. “I--wrestlin’, maybe. Sparrin’.” 

“No,” said Charles. “Arthur, I’m not going to hurt you just because I’ve had a bad day and you think it’ll help.” 

“You ain’t gonna hurt me,” Arthur said, confidently. “I trust you.”

Again Charles stared at Arthur like he’d lost his mind, slack-jawed, so surprised that his hands loosened, a little, and some of the awful tension eased out of his shoulders.

“I don’t understand,” Charles said. 

Arthur shrugged. “You need to hit somethin’,” he said. “That’s fine, I get that--I’ve been there, an’ after the week I’ve had I could prob’ly stand t’take a swing at somethin’ too. This way we don’t hurt anybody else, yeah? I’ll die ‘fore I hurt you, an’ I know you ain’t gonna hurt me. Not really. A few bruises wouldn’t be too bad. I kind’a like ‘em, sometimes.” 

“Arthur,” said Charles warningly, but a kind of longing had entered his eyes, a flicker of hope. 

_Yeah,_ Arthur thought, watching Charles closely. _I can do this._

“We’ll set some rules ‘fore we get started,” Arthur wheedled. He had Charles, he could see it. He just had to make Charles see that too. “No faces, no dick shots. Jus’ some nice, clean fun. It’ll be good for ya.” 

Charles narrowed his eyes. “ _Iyénawaye,_ ” he said. 

Arthur blinked. 

“ _I_ _yénawaye,”_ Charles repeated. 

“ _Iye--Iyénawaye,_ ” Arthur said, mouth shaped around the unfamiliar word. _“Iyénawaye,”_ he repeated, with more confidence, at Charles’s approving nod. 

“If either one of us says that word, we stop,” he said. “Doesn’t matter who’s winning, who’s losing, whatever. I say that word, we stop. You say it, same thing, understand.” 

“Charles,” said Arthur, being deliberately obtuse just to make the other man smile, to cut some of the desperate tension in his face, “is that your safeword?”

Charles growled and lunged, fast as a snake, caught Arthur around the neck with an arm. At the feel of a strong, muscled arm closing around the back of his neck Arthur tensed, unable to stop himself, but he met Charles’s eyes and carefully went limp, unresisting. 

_I trust you,_ he thought, looking at Charles steadily. _I know you ain’t gonna hurt me._

Charles eyed him, intense, but his grip never turned dangerous. It was firm and strong, hard to shake off, but it wasn’t dangerous. Charles wasn’t going to Arthur no matter how mad he was, and they both knew it. 

“ _Iyénawaye,”_ Arthur said gently, proving his point. 

Charles rolled his eyes and let Arthur go. 

“Fine,” said Charles. Arthur’s heart leapt. “Fine, you win. Where are we gonna do this?”

“Not the house,” Arthur said immediately, thinking about how much shit they’d have to move out of the way. “We can--the ground ‘round the back side of the barn’s not too hard. I mostly save it for the chickens, so they’ve got somewhere to graze that ain’t been trampled hard an’ flat by my fatass horses.”

“Okay,” said Charles. 

Arthur’s stomach tightened with anticipation. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll show you.” 

He took the lead, trusting Charles to follow now that they’d come to a sort of sideways arrangement, and brought him around the back of the barn. Arthur didn’t keep much back here, just a few tools to repair the fence and a feedbox he stocked with odds and ends he needed around the house and the farm just often enough to want to keep some on hand. 

The ground was soft and springy. With night falling fast the chickens had all retreated to the safety of their coop inside the barn, and Arthur and Charles were alone out here. 

Arthur swept out a hand, waiting for Charles to go and take a look around, get his bearings. 

Charles did so in silence, pacing up and down the length of the space, testing the ground with a toe, feeling for any sharp rocks that might trip one of them or lead to a bad cut. 

Arthur’s heart softened. Even this angry, this wound up, Charles was still being careful. 

_Yeah,_ he thought to himself, satisfied that he’d chosen the right course. _Yeah, he ain’t gonna hurt me._

“Ground rules,” said Charles, raising a finger. “Wrestling, not boxing. I don’t wanna knock you out, and I’ve seen you fight--I wanna keep all my teeth.” 

“Fair,” Arthur allowed, almost smiling. This was good, this was useful. This was something Arthur could do to help Charles, and he was almost eager for it. Charles was a graceful, skilled fighter. Wrestling with him ought to be fun. 

“No face, no groin, no sternum,” Charles continued, raising a second finger. “No hits that’ll put one of us in the hospital.” 

Arthur made a face. He hated the hospital. “Agreed.” 

A third finger went up. “We stop at _iyénawaye._ First person to say it yields the fight, and we have to stop when we hear it.” 

Arthur nodded and waited for the fourth finger. 

Charles nearly smiled. “That’s it,” he said, clever as a wolf, and lunged. 

Arthur yelped a laugh and scrambled out of the way. “Bastard,” he called, keeping light on his feet. _Trust Charles to press his advantage._

Charles’s first few swipes were wide and testing. He wasn’t trying to get a hold of Arthur, not really; he wanted to see how fast Arthur could move, to see which way Arthur jumped when he thought he was in trouble. 

Arthur narrowed his eyes. He usually fought in a flail of arms and legs and bloodlust, but he could fight smart too, if he wanted to. Charles made another grab for him again and Arthur let it happen, shaking Charles’s plan up. Charles, suddenly finding himself with an armful of Arthur, wasn’t ready, didn’t have his stance rooted, so Arthur dropped his shoulder low and _shoved._

Charles let go and stumbled, giving Arthur the opening to hook his foot underneath one of Charles’s ankles and dump him on his ass. 

Charles _growled._

“C’mon, big boy,” Arthur taunted, ignoring the way his jeans had suddenly become too tight, adrenaline and arousal twin pulses in his chest. He grinned broadly. “You’re gonna have t’work harder’n that.”

Charles growled and came up swinging, a haymaker that Arthur ducked followed by a wicked swipe that Arthur didn’t, the blow catching him in the side and sending him sprawling. Arthur hit the ground with an _oof,_ spat dirt, and stayed on the ground, sweeping his feet again to catch Charles low at the knee. 

“Alright,” said Charles from the ground, panting heavily. “New rule.”

“Uh-uh,” Arthur crowed, pouncing on Charles while he was down. He sat his weight across Charles’s hips to keep him down and grabbed the other man’s arms, pinning them to the dirt. Arthur grinned. “No new rules. Fight’s already started. Might be over, though. I’m willin’ to go another round ‘f you’re--hey!”

Charles rolled his hips, dirty, and the spike of arousal that went through Arthur like a bullet loosened his grip enough that Charles could twist and dump Arthur off his waist. 

Pulse hammering, dick hardening in his pants, Arthur scrambled back, putting space between him and Charles, and warily climbed to his feet. 

Charles did the same, mirroring Arthur, circling, feet kicking up clouds of dust. The hard, thunderous edge to his face had faded some, replaced by the here and now, so Arthur feinted right and went in from the left with a good old-fashioned body check. 

Charles got most of the way out of the way but Arthur still clipped him, throwing Charles off balance, and followed through with a solid punch to Charles’s gut and a headlock, forearm braced carefully so he didn’t choke Charles out. 

“Motherfucker,” Charles panted, sounding delighted, “you fight like a fuckin’ rez kid.” Then he brought the hard edge of his boot crashing against Arthur’s insole, and Arthur howled. 

He let go of Charles in a hurry, hopping back, cursing. “You fight like an alley cat,” Arthur hissed back. His dick was still painfully hard, though, so he clearly didn’t mind getting stepped on all that much. 

Arthur fell back a bit and let Charles make the next move. The sun had fully set now and darkness was encroaching, making Charles hard to see. He squinted against the dark and realized, suddenly, that he was fucked. 

Charles came in low and with all the forward power of a freight train. He caught Arthur around the middle before Arthur could so much as think to dodge. The force of the tackle lifted Arthur up off his feet and slammed him back into the ground. The wind went out of Arthur in a rush and his vision swam. 

He didn’t hesitate. Arthur kicked out, catching Charles in the shin, and tried to roll, but Charles’s grip was too good. Arthur only succeeded in flailing like a landed fish, flopping onto his belly, and Charles grunted, absorbed the kick, and set his hands at Arthur’s hips. 

The shadow of intimacy threw sparks through Arthur’s brain. He managed to get an arm out from under his chest and lashed out, sinking his fingernails into Charles’s ankle.

Charles hissed, but there was no dislodging him. He sat himself down across the tops of Arthur’s thighs, chest and hips pushing down on Arthur’s back, and used one hand to pry Arthur’s fingers out of his leg, twisting Arthur’s arm hard and sharp behind him. 

Arthur yelled. Pain pulsed out from his twisted shoulder, the muscles strained but not quite pulled to the point of true agony. It hurt and it felt good at the same time, and Arthur didn’t know what to do with that. 

Charles’s grip was firm. “I win,” Charles said, smugly. 

“The hell you did,” Arthur growled, kicking again, but there was nothing for him to kick against. He was caught.

“Come on, Arthur,” Charles said, twisting harder. The pain left Arthur breathless in the best kind of way, heat spreading from his arm to his shoulder, down his back, seeping behind his lungs. 

Arthur growled and tried to roll his hips, tried to get a knee underneath himself to surge to his feet and knock Charles off his back, but Charles was heavy and implacable across the backs of his thighs, as immovable as a mountain. 

Arthur wasn’t a quitter, though, so he fought it despite Charles’s soft laugh in his ear, despite the goosebumps breaking out down his neck, the pain thudding through his back, despite the discomfort of his dick trapped hard and weeping against his leg. Fear shuddered through him, the animal panic of a foot caught in a trap or a buck turning around to find a wolf’s teeth at its throat, then shuddered away as quickly as it came, leaving only arousal, hot and spiking, in its wake. 

Arthur growled again, spitting dirt, and thrashed _hard,_ this time succeeding only in rucking his own shirt up around his belly, scraping himself raw and driving his dick even harder into the crease of his own hip. 

“You can fight it all you want, Arthur,” Charles said, low and sweet. He still hadn’t let up and Arthur’s whole arm had gone to pins and needles, white sparks flashing in front of his eyes. “You’re caught. You’re just wearing yourself out, at this point.” 

“Fuck off,” Arthur snarled. He knew what Charles wanted him to say and he wasn’t going to say it. He wasn’t going to say it. 

Charles laughed and changed tactics, realizing that Arthur was too stubborn to give up like this, with pain alone. He shifted his weight, arranging himself so that he was pressed down on top of Arthur, touching at his neck and his shoulders and hips and thighs, warm and overwhelming. 

Charles was hard too, his cock bumping against the small of Arthur’s back. 

The vulnerability of Arthur’s position struck him all at once, left him weak and dizzy, gasping for air. 

Charles chuckled and rolled his hips. There wasn’t any friction, not really, wasn’t any real pleasure to be had from the act, but the parody of it left Arthur weak with wanting. 

“C’mon,” said Charles, and now he sounded raw and ragged too, voice low and rough with effort. “C’mon, Arthur.” 

Arthur pressed his face in the dirt, red with exertion and embarrassment. “ _Iyénawaye,”_ he finally gasped, folding like a house of cards. “ _Iyénawaye,_ Charles, Christ alive--”

Charles let him go immediately, let Arthur snatch back his arm and tuck it safely underneath himself, the whole arm weak and tingling. Pain had tangled itself with pleasure and taken root in Arthur’s spine, flashing up to his shoulders and down to his hips like fireworks thrown carelessly into the sky. 

Charles buried his face in the back of Arthur’s neck, kept him pinned to the dirt, and immediately started to make soothing, crooning sounds, pressing feathery kisses against Arthur’s sweat-slick hair and turning those big hands to gentleness, pressing deep at the places where he’d pinched and twisted and pulled in an effort to get Arthur to the ground. 

Everywhere Charles touched hurt, but hurt in a different way than Arthur had ever experienced. It was the good kind of pain that came from hard work, from muscles put to good use. Charles took that pain and pushed it deeper, drove it into the empty spaces between Arthur’s joints, the hollows of his spine, the planes of his shoulder blade, and when he took his hands away the pain was gone entirely, transformed into a bone-deep warmth. 

Arthur’d be sore tomorrow, he knew that much, but he’d be sore in a way that left him pleased and proud, like he’d put himself up against some kind of test and won even though he’d ended up in the dirt. 

Pins and needles gone, sweat starting to stick to Arthur’s body unpleasantly, he groaned, deeply, and made to haul himself up to his knees. 

Charles very deliberately put a hand back on the back of Arthur’s neck. 

“No,” he said. Arthur shivered all over. 

“I won,” Charles reminded him. He rolled his hips again, gently. Arthur moaned. 

“We didn’t, uh, agree on a prize or nothin’,” Arthur managed to get out, so hoarse his voice was near unrecognizable. 

“Pretty sure the prize was implied,” Charles shot back, a laugh burring what otherwise would’ve been low and smokey. He rolled his hips again just to be indulgent, or just to be an asshole, and suddenly all of the clothes they were wearing were too hot, too restrictive. 

Arthur and Charles moved together, fumbling with buttons and belts. Arthur got caught in his shirt, cursing, and toed his boots off even as Charles was tugging at his belt, loops straining, and dragging Arthur’s jeans halfway down his thighs. 

“Touch me,” Arthur urged, finally struggling out of his shirt, not even bothering to roll over, just pressing back against Charles’s hands like he’d if they couldn’t be pressed skin to skin. 

Charles didn’t get much farther undressing. He got his shirt open, his pants far enough down his thighs to free his dick, then pressed himself back down over Arthur, burying his face in the junction of Arthur’s neck and shoulder. 

They rolled their hips together, Charles’s dick catching between Arthur’s thighs, dragging hot and hard over his hole without ever sliding in and giving Arthur what he wanted, what he needed, and Arthur made a punched-out, raw sound, half a whine and half a moan, and reaching blindly behind him to clutch at Charles’s hips. 

“Shhh,” Charles soothed, gentle, gentle. Arthur could have shouted. He didn’t _need_ gentle. He needed--he needed-- 

“I’ve got you, Arthur,” Charles said. “I’ve got you. I need--I didn’t bring any lube or anything, can you make it back to the--” 

“No, I cain’t make it back to the goddamn house,” Arthur hissed. He was going to die if he didn’t get Charles inside him. His own dick was cutting glass against his belly, leaking precome, and his legs were shaking like a starter colt’s. “There’s--by the barn, there’s oil, gun oil in the feedbox, I got a condom in my pocket--” 

“Arthur,” said Charles, putting a hand between Arthur’s shoulder blades, rooting him back down to earth and scattering the breath out of his lungs. “I’ve got you. I’ll be just a minute, okay?” 

Arthur whined, determined not to let him go. He felt wild, felt insane, felt like he’d caught fire deep in his chest and out burn away to nothing by the time Charles got back. 

“Come on, sweetheart,” Charles urged. “Why don’t you get started on getting yourself ready, huh? I’ll be right back, I promise.” 

Arthur groaned, but Charles was right--they couldn’t fuck like this, with nothing by sweat and spit to ease the way. Charles couldn’t stop himself from rolling his hips one more time, dragging his dick slow and sweet between Arthur’s thighs, then he tore himself away like it caused him physical pain to do so and stumbled up to his feet, lurching towards the barn. 

Arthur didn’t bother rolling over--Charles wanted him on his belly, it seemed, so he only kicked weakly to shake off his boots and his jeans, brought two fingers to his mouth to wet them, and did as Charles had asked. 

He slid one spit-slicked finger inside himself, wincing as his knuckles caught at the rim of his ass, burning a bit, then added another before he was quite ready, hissing at the burn. That pain too, like the pain in his shoulder and arm, spread out and diffused up Arthur’s spine, knotted itself tight with pleasure. 

Charles came back just as Arthur’s skin started to stretch too tight over his bones, caught and helpless, arousal sharp enough to cut but not enough to get Arthur off. 

He growled, low, and folded himself back over Arthur’s back, one big hand closing over Arthur’s, drawing Arthur’s fingers out of himself. 

Charles had shed the rest of his clothes too, shirt gone, jeans lying somewhere in the field, and when he pressed his dick back against the cleft of Arthur’s ass Arthur realized he’d put a condom on too. Charles’s fingers and his dick were dripping with gun oil. 

Charles replaced Arthur’s fingers with his own, first two and then three, opening Arthur up with deft skill, his callouses sparking pleasure up Arthur’s back and the wet, lewd sound of oil dripping down Arthur’s ass to shine on the backs of his thighs, to drip down his balls and his cock, pulling another moan out from between Arthur’s teeth. 

“C’mon,” Arthur panted, getting his knees under himself at last to give Charles better access, moaning when Charles let out a shocked, hungry growl against the back of his neck. “C’mon, Charles, c’mon, I ain’t gonna break--”

“Are you,” Charles panted back, hair tickling Arthur’s back. “Are you this fuckin’--this fuckin’ mouthy with everybody?” 

Arthur snarled, past wit and quips, and reached behind himself again, clumsily, to search for Charles’s warmth. 

Charles put a steadying hand on Arthur’s hip and pulled his fingers out of Arthur’s ass. He keened, wet and empty, and Charles tightened his grip, fingers digging into Arthur’s hipbone. 

“I’ve got you,” Charles repeated, unsteady now, their familiar litany wobbly, unbalanced by desire. Arthur felt the hot, blunt head of Charles’s dick brush against his hole. Arthur let out a shuddery breath and tried to push back, but Charles’s grip on his hip was iron. 

Charles teased Arthur for a minute, despite Arthur’s growing curses, toyed with him like a cat that had caught a particularly interested mouth. He rubbed the head of his dick against Arthur’s open, wet hole, dragged it down the length of Arthur’s ass, brought it back up to nudge against him. 

“Charles,” Arthur said, as firmly as he could manage, “if you don’t fuck me right now, I swear to god I’m gonna--”

“Impatient,” Charles chided, mirth sparkling in his voice, and pushed in. He went slowly, nudging his dick in a bare inch at a time while Arthur cursed and twisted, drying to push himself back to seat Charles in to the base. “ _And_ greedy.” 

Charles’s self-control was ironclad. He didn’t let Arthur set the pace, didn’t let Arthur rear back and shove himself down onto Charles’s cock, didn’t let Arthur pull away to get some friction. He took Arthur by the other hip, breathing like a racehorse that had one by a furlough, and pushed himself in slowly but surely, steadily, until Arthur’s own breath was coming out in one long, continuous moan and Charles was seated so deeply in Arthur that Arthur could swear his dick was knocking against the bottom of Arthur’s ribcage. 

“There,” Charles said, the smug bastard, “was that so bad?” 

This time Arthur _did_ manage to buck, lunging forward and bringing himself back fast and hard, shouting when Charles’s grip on his hips tightened and Charles mirrored the motion, fucking in fast once, twice before he caught himself and brought their pace back down. 

“Alright, that was fair,” Charles panted, and he stopped teasing, stopped trying to hold Arthur still. They struggled to find a good rhythm for a moment, Arthur wanting to race ahead and Charles wanting to drag it all out, but they managed it in the end, Charles pushing in with deep, even strokes that sent tension singing tighter and tighter up Arthur’s spine.

“Charles,” Arthur gasped, dropping his hands away to brace himself against the ground. He was shaking all over, trembling wildly, and there didn’t seem to be enough air in the world to keep him from panting. “Charles, I’m gonna--I ain’t--” 

Charles finally released his grip on Arthur’s hips to wrap one hand around Arthur’s leaking cock, pulling it in time with his thrusts. “I know,” he said, just as winded. “I’m right with you, Arthur, just hold on--” 

Charles’s thrusts grew uneven, erratic, his body weight bearing down like all he wanted was to sink inside of Arthur’s bones and join them together forever, his grip on Arthur’s cock hard, near-bruising, sweet in a way that had Arthur crying out into his elbow. 

“I’ve got you,” Charles promised again, sweet and honest, and then with one more thrust he had them tipping over the edge together, rushing towards a finish line, stars and darkness spilling out around them on all sides. 

\---

Arthur woke up smelling smoke. 

He had a long history with fire, did Arthur, and he knew how to tell the kinds of fire apart just from the first whiff of smoke; wildfires were burst-pine and blackened leaves, near-fragrant with the smell of boiling sap. Campfires were woodsy and safe. Housefires were melting plastic and burning wool, tarry, almost, heavy. 

And fires set by human hands were oily, gaseous. Burning butane left a thick taste in the back of the mouth.

Arthur woke up tasting butane and was out of bed before the rest of him had caught up. He cast around frantically, searching for the fire, and saw orange flames leaping out across the yard. He and Charles had made it back in eventually, too old to sleep in the field like a pair of rutting dogs, and had collapsed into bed without bothering to clean up behind wiping a rag over Arthur’s belly and tying off the used condom. 

Arthur’s heart dropped like a stone. 

“The barn,” he whispered, still not quite all the way awake, barely able to understand what he was seeing. “The barn--Charles!” Arthur shouted, jostling the other man awake. “Charles, get up, the barn’s on fire!” 

Arthur didn’t wait to see if Charles had heard or understood. He tore down the hall and out into the yard wearing nothing but his boxers, bare feet slipping in the dewy grass. 

Even from the house he could feel the heat roaring up as fire licked up the side of his barn, flames sullen and snapping, oily smoke streaming into the sky. 

There was a man, black against the firelight, standing maybe ten, fifteen feet away from the barn, and as Arthur ran towards him the man lit another Molotov cocktail and lobbed into one of the barn’s open windows.

Arthur’s animals were all fleeing the fire, cats and chickens going out through the windows, dogs howling, the horses beginning to scream out in the paddock, but the others--the goats and Reliance--were still trapped in the barn. They couldn’t climb or fly, and Reliance was still tied in her stall. 

“ _HEY!”_ Arthur roared, pitched furious, and the man spun around. The fire was too bright for Arthur to catch sight of the feller’s face, to see who’d come out here and dare to fuck with Arthur’s home, with his animals, with the man Arthur loved sleeping in Arthur’s bed, but he saw Arthur coming and his courage broke. He abandoned the other bottles at his feet and bolted, tearing across the paddock past the gnarled tree and into the darkness past it. Arthur didn’t give chase. 

He went straight to the barn door, wrenched it open, and plunged inside. 

Smoke billowed out to meet him and the fire leaped higher, fueled by the wind coming in through the now-open door, but Arthur didn’t care. 

The goats, panicked and screaming in their eerie voices, bolted out past him, their eyes wild. A valiant barn cat ran out with a kitten in her mouth. Even mice were fleeing, streaming across the barn and vanishing into the grass outside. 

Reliance was in her stall, snorting and half-rearing as the flames licked the eastern wall. The fire hadn’t eaten its way up to the roof, yet, but the wood was burning through and a few other Molotovs were smoldering across the barn, flames licking hungrily up from their shattered remains. 

Arthur threw an elbow over his mouth, coughing, and fumbled for the latch. Heat seared his lungs, but the man who’d started the fire had miscalculated. He hadn’t expected Arthur to know the reek of butane, all these years later, and he hadn’t had enough time to make sure the fire had well and truly caught.

The whole eastern wall of the barn was ablaze, that was true, but other cocktails the man had thrown in had fizzled out or burned themselves empty. None of the hay had caught and most had splashed harmlessly against concrete or stone. 

Smoke killed, though, and Lia was already ill. 

Arthur got Lia’s stall door open, eyes stinging. Reliance screamed, her own eyes white and rolling with terror. 

Arthur didn’t bother trying to calm her down. She wouldn’t be able to hear him over the roar of the flames anyway, and there wasn’t _time._

She was still tethered to a ring in her stall, kept tied to discourage her from wandering or pawing while her foot was still sore. Arthur hadn’t brought a knife to cut her loose and she wouldn’t hold still long enough to let him unclip her at the halter, so he relied on his strength again and grabbed the metal ring that was embedded into the stall wall. 

He gritted his teeth and _pulled_ with all his might, hissing as the hot metal singed his hand. The ring held for a moment, made to withstand the tugging of a bored horse, but finally gave, the wood around it cracking as Arthur tore it free. 

Lead rope swinging, Lia bolted. Arthur let her, trusting her instincts, even as her hip swung around and knocked into him, sending him spilling to his knees. 

Arthur grunted at the impact, teeth rattling, knees scraping. Heat boiled behind him. 

“Get _up!_ ” Charles roared, somewhere beyond Arthur. 

_He followed me,_ Arthur realized. 

Arthur coughed, half-blind, and obeyed. He covered his mouth and nose with an elbow again and staggered to his feet. Charles was rushing past, arms full of kittens, hair wild around his face, and Arthur stumbled after him. 

He hit the open air again and heaved a shuddering breath. His eyes streamed. 

“That th’ last of ‘em?” he rasped, once they’d cleared the barn, the night air a balm. Arthur gulped in clean breaths, throat aching. He was dizzy with smoke and adrenaline. 

“Think so,” Charles said grimly, depositing the kittens into the paws of their frantic mother. Soot stained his eyebrows. “The goats, the horses--?” 

“Lia made it out,” Arthur said. He didn’t know where she’d gone, run panicked into the dark, but hopefully it hadn’t been far. “She was the last. The feller, the man who was throwin’ torches, did you see--?” 

“He ran out into the paddock,” Charles said. “Arthur, your barn…” 

The eastern wall was still in flames, fire licking the roof, but it wasn’t spreading any further. 

“The hose,” Arthur said. The arsonist could wait. “Get the hose, I’ll grab the extinguisher from the house.”

Charles nodded and did as he was asked while Arthur bounded into the house and fetched the fire extinguisher out of the kitchen. Dozens of eyes stared at him as he came and went--with the front door open, most of his terrified animals had come inside. Arthur let them be, just glad they were safe. 

Back by the barn Charles had fetched the hose from around the other side and was spraying the fire down as best he could, though the hose was spluttering and gasping. Trying to put out a barn fire with a hose and an extinguisher probably wasn’t the best idea, but Arthur lived twenty miles from the nearest fire department and it was all volunteers anyway. If they waited any longer, the roof might catch and then the whole thing would come down. 

Arthur flicked the extinguisher open and got to work.

By the time he and Charles had gotten the fire under control, Arthur’s front yard was covered in white foam and scraps of ash. A thick slurry of water and mud and fire extinguisher foam had heaped up at the base of the barn and seeped across half of the first paddock. The mess would be days cleaning up.

But the fire’d gone out at last. Without a few more bottles of butane lobbed in there to spread the fire to the hay and grain Arthur kept stored in the loft, the barn hadn’t caught properly. The eastern wall had burned down to its structure, skeletal and charred, but the roof hadn’t come down and the fire, blessedly, hadn’t spread. 

“You alright?” Arthur called gruffly, his throat seared, casting Charles a look over his shoulder as he carefully sprayed down anything that was still smoldering. 

Charles was bare-chested and barefoot, like Arthur, and his expression was wild. Ash had fallen into his hair and soot streaked his face, his chest. He had a shiny burn on one hand, probably from snatching kittens up out of the barn. 

“I’m alive,” said Charles, shortly. “You?” 

“Alive,” Arthur grunted. He looked down at his own hands and saw burns there too, raw and red. His fingertips were blistered where he’d grabbed the ring on the wall to free Reliance and cinders had fallen onto his shoulders, his arms, leaving faint marks. 

“What happened?” Charles asked. “I thought I saw--” He stopped, shook his head. “I thought I saw someone running.”

‘Someone was runnin’,” Arthur said. A strange sort of grim certainty settled into his heart. Someone had lit his barn on fire, on purpose. He swept his gaze out over the yard and the paddock. “You see where he went?”

“Uh, that way, I think,” said Charles, pushing his chin to gesture across the paddock. “But, Arthur, why--” 

“In a minute,” Arthur interrupted. Now that his panic was fading, the fire out and the animals more or less safe, cold, implacable fury was building in his chest like a winter blizzard, howling and blinding. 

Charles drew back, startled. “Arthur,” he began, but Arthur shook his head. 

“Can you, uh, check on the animals?” Arthur asked, forcing himself to stay calm. “Most of ‘em are in the house, but Lia ran off somewhere. I’ll be--I’ll be right back.”

Charles wavered for a moment, clearly reluctant to let Arthur go shooting off in the dark after a man who’d just tried to burn down Arthur’s barn, but Arthur was a big boy and Charles knew it. He nodded. 

Arthur dipped his head, thankful, and set off into the field, stopping only to reach inside his front door and grab the rifle he kept by the door. 

The horses had all fled to the back paddocks. Buell, still alone in his field, was screaming, racing up and down the length of his fence with his eyes rolling in his head. Arthur’s boarder horses, Silver Dollar, Old Boy and Brown Jack, had been joined by Blue, Magnolia and Cloudrunner. 

Arthur frowned, counting heads and hides. 

_Where’s Rooster?_ He thought, his heart rate kicking up again. _Where’s Lyra?_

He got his answer as he reached the end of the first paddock and slipped between the slats of the fence into the second. 

The arsonist had run from Arthur, going across the paddock instead of down the drive because Arthur and Charles had been between him and the gravel. The man had made it to the second paddock, probably aimed for the gate and the hills just past it, but he hadn’t made it over the fence to safety.

Lyra and Rooster, it seemed, had given chase. 

There was a dirty leather jacket on the ground, likely torn in a few places from where the horses had snatched at it, and the portion of field that bordered the fence was all torn up and trampled, ground churned, Rooster patrolling the edge of the fence and screaming challenges out beyond it in a great fury. 

Lyra was with him and her pretty white face was red at the mouth, red flecked up her cheek, splashed down her neck and chest. 

The arsonist was dead at her feet.

Arthur whistled, softly. 

Most people thought that horses were safe, because horses were silly and odd-looking and lacked the teeth and claws of other large animals, like wolves and bears. Horses weren’t safe. They were prey animals, that was true, and they preferred to run off rather than confront a threat, but some horses were just plain braver than others, or just plain meaner, and the man who’d tried to burn down Arthur’s barn had chosen to try and run past two horses that were both brave as lions and mean as snakes. 

Arthur approached his horses, propping his rifle up against the fence, and spoke slowly to them. He hoped that Charles couldn’t see him out here, the body, the blood. He’d have questions, and Arthur wasn’t sure how to answer them.

 _I thought I’d have more time,_ he thought, distantly.

“Easy, girl,” Arthur crooned, forcing himself to shove his worries about what Charles would say, what he’d think, out of his mind, hands up so that Lyra could see him coming. 

She snorted and tossed her head but she let Arthur come close, prancing her feet a bit like she was proud of herself. 

_Probably_ is _proud of herself, the damn animal,_ Arthur thought.

He looked down at the dead man. 

The feller’d been trampled to death. That much was clear. He was mottled and battered, jacket lost in the mud, eyes wide open and staring up at the smoke-filled sky. Lyra had bitten him, but that wasn’t what had killed him. Despite her high opinion of herself Lyra’s teeth were blunt. 

No, it was the half-circular gashes in the man’s face, his throat, that showed Arthur how he’d died. He must’ve fallen, either slipped in the grass or thrown down by one of the horses, and one he’d hit the dirt there had been no chance for him. 

“You’re a menace,” Arthur told Lyra. Her hooves, now that he looked down, were bloody too. 

Lyra whickered. She _was_ pleased with herself, Arthur could see it in the lines of her body. 

He couldn’t spare the energy to be all that torn up about it, his horses murdering a man. The body would be a bitch to clean up, since Arthur had no interest in calling the cops, but he’d manage somehow. 

_That feller with the pig ranch down by Flat Iron owes me a favor,_ Arthur thought, the rational, professional part of his brain kicking in, taking over, like a dead man in his paddock was nothing more troubling than a rude patron at the bar or a spilled beer in the bathroom. 

Arthur spent another few seconds studying the dead man, trying to place his face, but he came up empty. If Arthur had ever seen this man before, he didn’t remember. The feller was middle-aged, maybe forty or forty-five, with brown hair and stupid fucking sideburns on either side of his face. Arthur didn’t know him. That wasn’t unusual--Arthur saw dozens of people every day. Most of them were completely and totally unremarkable. 

Still, the man must’ve had some kind of reason for wanting to burn down Arthur’s barn. A barn was different from a house. If you wanted to kill a man, you burned down his house. If you wanted to scare him, you burned something else. His car, his shed, his barn. 

_So why’d you wanna scare me?_ Arthur thought, leaning down to check the man’s pockets. _Who am I to you?_

The man’s pockets, like Arthur’s memory, came up empty. He’d died with nothing on him but a lighter and a fistful of change. 

Arthur frowned.

He straightened, slipping a bit in the bloody mud around the body, and looked around. 

_There’s gotta be somethin’ here,_ he thought. _Somethin’ to help me…_

His eyes fell on the leather jacket lying abandoned a few paces back. If Arthur had to guess, he’d say that Lyra had caught the jacket in her teeth and the man had shrugged out of it, trying desperately to shake the horses. 

Arthur padded over, sore and exhausted, and bent to scoop it up. 

He got the jacket off the ground, shook it to get rid of some dirt, and flipped it over. 

_Oh,_ he thought, his blood running cold. _That explains it._

The jacket itself was nothing special. The leather was genuine but old and ill-cared for, cracked all up and down the arms. A few patches were sown into the front, most of them meaningless--a smiley face, a Harley logo, a few rockers that said stupid shit like _MAN OF MAHYEM_ and _CUSTER ORIGINAL_. 

On the back was a much larger patch. A stout, square cross, stitched in white and black, outlined with a thick green circle. 

Arthur swore. He clutched at the jacket--the kutte--so tightly his hand hurt. 

“Colm O’Driscoll,” he said to himself, quietly, like speaking the man’s name aloud would summon him to Arthur’s feet to explain just exactly what one of his boys was doing burning shit down on Arthur’s property.

Several things clicked into place in Arthur’s head at about the same time.

He knew now what had been bothering lately, why he’d felt watched, followed. Someone _had_ been following him. The man on the Harley Fatboy, with the green bandana over his mouth and nose. He’d been an O’Driscoll. 

As far as Arthur knew, Colm O’Driscoll, Dutch’s onetime friend, was still in prison somewhere up in Wyoming for murder, and was likely to stay that way for the rest of his natural life. The O’Driscoll Boys, leaderless, had disbanded. 

_Or apparently not._

Arthur cast a dark look at the body. Rooster’d settled now, content that his screaming had warned off any more danger, and Lyra whickered again, flicking her ears. 

_They ain’t gonna die, not tonight at least._

Arthur tightened his grip on the jacket, torn. The body--the body would keep, for now. If the O’Driscoll, whoever he’d been, had known to come here to hit Arthur where he lived, what else did he know? 

_I saw him everywhere,_ Arthur remembered. Out on the road in Strawberry, out in the desert, down in Valentine turning around the corner as Arthur sipped his coffee on the roof of the Saints Hotel. He’d followed Arthur on his delivery routes. He’d followed Arthur _home._

Ice crept into his chest. 

_I need to get down to the bar,_ he thought. He had to warn Dutch and Hosea. It wasn’t too late in the night, not yet. Somebody would still be down there. 

_Charles ain’t gonna be happy._

That was another problem, one Arthur would have to deal with tonight, but making sure that everyone else was safe took priority. He hoped that Charles would understand, but his hopes weren’t high.

Arthur picked his way back towards his house slowly, his knees aching, his steps heavy. Most of the noise and excitement had died down. Buell was still hollering his fool head off, but the rest of the horses had calmed and the dogs’ frantic howling had eased. 

Charles had turned all the lights on in the house, light spilling across the lawn like a beacon. The holes in the barn gaped, dark and ugly. 

“Arthur,” Charles said from the porch, standing back up. He’d found Reliance and brought her back, tethered her to one of the posts holding up the porch roof. Arthur cast a quick eye over the poor mare. She was soot-stained and trembling still, her sore foot held off the ground, but she was alive. 

“Charles,” Arthur said, tiredly. 

“What happened?” Charles asked. “Are you alright? What’s going on?” 

Arthur held a hand up. “I gotta go,” he said. 

Charles stared at him. “What?” 

“I gotta get down to Lost Country,” he said. “I ain’t got time to explain. It’s--it’s important.” 

“Arthur,” said Charles, speaking slowly, like he thought that Arthur might be in shock. “Someone just tried to burn down your barn.”

“I know,” Arthur said. He clutched the O’Driscoll’s jacket. “That’s why I gotta go. It’s real important, Charles. I gotta--I gotta tell Dutch an’ Hosea. They gotta know. Then I’ll come back and explain, I promise.” 

“Arthur,” Charles said. His eyes had sharpened like a knife. “What’s _happening?_ ”

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose, fear and anger clawing at his throat. “I need you to trust me, honey,” he said. “You’re gonna be fine here, I’ll only be gone for an hour, maybe two, and I’ll explain it all to you, I swear, but I--”

“Have to go,” said Charles, still with that strange sharpness in his eyes. “Fine. Go. I’ll look after the animals.”

“I love you,” said Arthur gratefully, hoping that it would soften Charles’s strangeness a little, and it did. Arthur didn’t know if he’d get to say it again, not after--not after he explained it all. Charles dipped his head a little, grudging. Arthur ducked inside, shooing chickens aside, and hastily dressed, not letting go of the O’Driscoll kutte. 

He lit out a few minutes later. He didn’t have the time to worry about the body still in his field or the smoke hanging in the sky, so he didn’t worry about it. He couldn’t. He set it all aside and rode, twisting behind himself every so often to make sure he wasn’t being followed. 

When he tore into the parking lot, the evening crowd had mostly dispersed, the cowboys and ranch hands headed home for a few hours of sleep before they were up again before the sun. 

All of the employee cars were still in the lot, though, Bill’s bike, Javier’s car, Dutch’s white Panhead. 

Arthur screeched into the lot, parked, and took just a second to gather his thoughts. _I ain’t gonna be nice about this,_ he thought. _I ain’t--we warned Dutch and warned Dutch, we_ told _him, an’ now there’s O’Driscolls followin’ me around and settin’ my shit on fire._ He grabbed the kutte and slammed his way inside. 

“Dutch!” he hollered, his voice still broken from the smoke. “Dutch!” 

“Jesus Christ, Arthur, what’re you yellin’ for?” Bill complained, behind the bar counting tips, but Arthur was in no goddamn mood to hear it. 

“Dutch!” he shouted. 

“Arthur, what the hell--” Dutch shouted back, coming out from the kitchen, but he drew up short when he saw the state that Arthur was in, the soot streaked across his face, the wild look in Arthur’s eyes. 

Dutch’s gaze landed on the O’Driscoll kutte still hanging in Arthur’s hand. “What is that,” he asked, low and dangerous. 

Arthur, trembling with fury, balled it up and threw it at him. “A goddamn O’Driscoll,” he spat, “came to my house tonight, Dutch, an’ tried to burn down my fuckin’ barn. An _O’Driscoll._ ” 

“There aren’t any O’Driscolls left,” Dutch said, baffled, even though a kutte with Colm O’Driscoll’s fucking sign was hanging from his hand. “They disbanded after Colm went in, or patched over to other crews.” 

“Maybe you don’t know everythin’ after all,” Arthur snarled. The rest of the closing crew had crowded in behind Dutch, watching the exchange with wide eyes. 

Dutch’s expression darkened. 

“Now, Arthur,” he said, a black note of warning in his voice, “you’ve clearly had a hell of a night, but that’s no reason to--” 

Whatever condescending, smarmy _bullshit_ he’d been about to say was cut off by the sound of someone else slamming into the bar, throwing open the front door with enough force that it bounced off the wall and rattled like it was fit to break. 

Arthur spun around, expecting another O’Driscoll with a gun in hand, and found himself staring at Lenny, who was wild-eyed and bruised. 

“Shit, kid,” said Arthur, derailed from his own fury by the sight of Lenny. “You look fuckin’ _awful._ What happened?”

“They got John!” Lenny shouted, shoving his way up past Arthur. Arthur let him, startled--the poor kid was ashen, trembling wildly, his face beaded with sweat and his eyes hunted. His jacket was torn at the elbows, like he’d hit the ground hard, and there was dried blood at his hairline. 

“Woah, son,” Dutch said, just as alarmed, and caught Lenny by the elbow, pulling the kid safely into his shadow. “Slow down, slow down. What’s happened?” 

“They got John!” Lenny cried again, shrugging off Dutch’s grip. His eyes were wild, staring. Arthur’s gut dropped. Lenny was young, yeah, but he was fearless usually, as good in a fight as any of them.

 _If Lenny’s this fucking scared..._ Arthur thought, his heart dropping down to his boots. 

“Who’s got John?” Dutch said, tugging Lenny around again. He took the kid by both shoulders, giving him a gentle, grounding shake. “Who, boy? Breathe.” 

Lenny took a deep, gulping breath, and said, “The Raiders,” he said. “The Lemoyne Raiders. They grabbed John outside of Rhodes.”

Dutch and Arthur’s eyes met over the top of Lenny’s head. 

“Well,” said Dutch, into the sudden, paralyzing silence that had fallen over the remnants of Dutch’s Boys Motorcycle Club like a hammer, “shit.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [justin mcelroy voice] the prestige!


	9. new world: ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everybody!!
> 
> I apologize for the two-week break instead of the usual one; my job really popped off in the last two weeks, and I've been running around [state] and [city] like a lunatic trying to get things squared away. I do not recommend working with the public in the middle of a pandemic. I love my job and it's very rewarding, but I have aged about eighty years in the last six months. 
> 
> I want to thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for the kudos and comments left on the last chapter! I am so, so grateful to everyone who's stuck with the 101,000 words of this story as the genre has shifted from coffeeshop AU to "oh god they're bikers aren't they" AU. I really, really appreciate everyone who's read, kudos'd and/or commented on this weird little heart-story that I can't seem to stop writing. 
> 
> Please skip to the end for content warnings, if you need those.

The silence held for a minute, delicate as a soap bubble, and then popped all at once. 

A dozen overlapping voices started to clamor for attention as the remnants of the gang Arthur had once terrorized the Pacific Coast with all collectively lost their minds a little bit; Dutch’s people were rowdy at the best of times, and this certainly wasn’t the best of times. 

Arthur didn’t think that the club had received so much bad news all at once since before they’d settled down in Valentine. The days leading up _to_ Valentine had been bad days, gloomy days, but that had been six years ago. 

_I ain’t the only one who’s gotten soft livin’ like this,_ Arthur thought, watching his friends grow increasingly panicked. Abigail wasn’t here, thankfully, though Karen and Mary-Beth were working themselves up just fine on her behalf. 

Sadie was calm, her face pale as moonlight across the bar, but Bill was shouting, half-drunk, and Sean was cracking his knuckles like he had half a mind to throw down with every biker in leathers between here and Saint Denis. 

Arthur met Dutch’s eyes over all the chaos. 

Dutch looked steadily back, put his fingers to his lips, and whistled high enough and sharp enough to crack glass. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, that is _enough,_ ” Dutch rumbled. “Missus Grimshaw, get the first aid kit outta my office, will you? Mister Summers, c’mere, sit down. From the beginning, son.” 

Lenny did as he was told, staggering up to the bar, where he wavered and nearly collapsed before Arthur caught his elbow and maneuvered him onto a barstool. The kid was shaking like a leaf under Arthur’s hand. 

“Easy, kid,” Arthur grunted, taking a closer look at the blood dried along Lenny’s hairline. The cut it came from was small enough, maybe an inch or so laid into the skin just above Lenny’s temple. It looked like it hurt like hell, but Arthur didn’t think it would kill the kid. 

No, Lenny was more scared than he was hurt. 

“Easy,” Arthur repeated, using his thumb to rub a soothing circle into Lenny’s elbow. “You’re alright now, Lenny, we’ve got’cha. Missus Grimshaw,” Arthur added, and stood aside to let Susan fuss as she came up behind him with the first aid kid in her hands. 

Those gathered in the bar had started to murmur again, picking up speed and volume, until Dutch put his head up again and hissed for quiet. 

“Alright, Lenny,” Dutch said, once everybody else had obeyed, his voice slow and deliberate. “Start from the beginning. What happened? Where’s John?”

Lenny took a deep breath and said, voice a bit more even than before, “We were--John and I--we were heading down to Rhodes with--with the delivery,” Lenny said. 

Dutch frowned. “You two left hours ago,” he said. “The delivery run’s for the morning. What took so long?” 

“The road into Rhodes was blocked,” said Lenny. “There was a--a tree down, a big old oak tree, in the middle of the road. John thought it must’ve come down in a dust storm or something. The road crew hadn’t cleared it yet, so we had to turn around and go in on Old Pleasance.”

Arthur’s heart sank. 

“But it was a trap,” Lenny continued, confirming Arthur’s fears. “They were waiting for us.”

“Who was waitin’ for you, son?” Dutch asked, leaning in close. Mrs. Grimshaw tutted at him, still blotting blood from Lenny’s hairline, but Lenny didn’t shy away. 

“Lemoyne Raiders,” he said. “Six of ‘em. All on bikes, and all armed. They told us to… to get out, to hand over what we had in the Jeep, and to lay down on our stomachs.” Lenny’s face twisted. “I thought we should just run for it, but John knew we were trapped. He told me to--he told me to follow his lead, so I did. John got out, started walking towards the Raiders with his hands up. He--once the Raiders saw--me,” and Lenny broke to gesture at himself, and Arthur paled, “--they started to--well. You all know the Raiders.” 

“I am truly sorry, son,” Dutch said, pained. 

Lenny shook his head. “John saved my life,” he said. “John saw--saw which way the wind was blowin’, once the Raiders started getting excited about having a black man in their hands, and he charged the guy I guess was in charge, some ugly motherfucker on a Suzuki, yelling at me to run while he did it. And I--” Lenny’s face crumpled again, this time with shame. 

“I ran,” Lenny said. The whole bar was dead silent, hanging onto Lenny’s every word. “I ran. I took off into the trees so they couldn’t follow me on their bikes.” Lenny gestured at the cut on his hairline. “Damn near broke my neck falling down a ravine, but I got away. I had to hop on the back of a livestock train to get to Flatneck Station, then I ran here from there.” 

Arthur whistled, more impressed with every word that came out of Lenny’s mouth. Flatneck Station was no light jog down the road. 

“You did good, kid,” Arthur said loudly, strongly, before anybody else in the room could call Lenny a coward for running. Six against two was bad odds, especially since John and Lenny had just been out running a delivery, not expecting a fight. 

Dutch flashed Arthur an unreadable look, but agreed. “You did real good, Lenny,” he said. “You made it back to us, and that’s what’s important.” 

“What about the guns, kid?” Micah called from the back of the bar. “You didn’t let the Raiders make off with our guns, didja?”

“Guns can be replaced,” Dutch cut in, silencing Micah. Arthur arched an eyebrow. He didn’t think Dutch had had it in him to shut Micah down like that. “Lenny, what were you carryin’?”

“Six Glocks, a bag of Berettas, and two Benelli Em-Fours,” Lenny reported. He had a head for details, Lenny. Of course he’d memorized the day’s delivery. 

Dutch’s Boys had been running guns for twenty years, long before they’d hid out in Valentine and had decided that actually _being_ mostly law-abiding citizens was a better cover than playacting as such. When Dutch had officially and publicly disbanded the club, he’d dropped most of the jobs they’d had going at the time, everything but the gunrunning and the money laundering. 

Money laundering through a bar was easy as fuck. Hosea had “forgotten” to buy a computer system when Lost Country was getting off its feet, and after a year or two most locals had figured out that they could only pay in cash, so money moved in and out all the time. 

Using a bar as a front for running guns up and down the Dakota River basin was a little harder, until that bar had also become a coffee shop and that coffee shop had started to deliver.

 _We ain’t runnin’ even a quarter of the guns we used to run, back in the day,_ Arthur thought, watching Mrs. Grimshaw tend to Lenny. _But we’re runnin’ enough that folks know about it._

“That ain’t too bad,” Dutch assured Lenny, who was starting to look upset and shaky again. “We keep extra Glocks and Berettas around anyway. The Benellis will be a little harder to replace, but I’d rather have to replace a few shotguns than replace a few of my friends.” Dutch squeezed Lenny’s shoulder and the kid gave him a watery smile. 

“How d’you know it was the Raiders?” Bill asked, squinting. He’d done his fair share of tangling with the Raiders too, years ago, just as Arthur and John and Javier had. 

“Aside from the big-ass patches across their backs?” Lenny snapped. 

“Bill, leave him alone,” Dutch warned. “Lenny, you did good, okay? We’ll--we’ll figure something out. I’m just glad you’re alright.”

“We’re goin’ to get John, that’s what we’re doin’,” Arthur said. Dutch still had the O’Driscoll kutte in his hand, and Arthur’s anger rekindled easily enough. “O’Driscolls an’ Raiders in the same goddamn night… this ain’t right, Dutch, you know it ain’t. Somethin’s wrong. We missed somethin’. An’ now John’s payin’ for it.”

“Raiders don’t like to play with their food,” Micah commented from the back, disinterested. “Marston’s probably dead already.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Arthur snarled, whirling on Micah. Raw anger made his teeth ache. “Jus’ shut the fuck up, Micah.” 

“Arthur,” Dutch began, and he had the balls to sound _conciliatory,_ like Arthur was the one being unreasonable, so Arthur swung around and flashed teeth at him too. 

“ _No,_ ” Arthur said, low and dangerous. “Charles was _in my bed,_ Dutch. I had him home with me, an’ now I got a dead fuckin’ O’Driscoll in my field, a half-burned down barn, an’ an injured horse. Now John’s been taken too. 

“Somethin’ ain’t right here,” Arthur continued, determined to get all of his anger out in the open before Dutch could snatch back control of the situation. “We get six years’a peace an’ quiet, then as soon as we start spreadin’ our wings again, _this_ happens?” 

“That’s enough, Arthur,” Dutch snapped back, a dangerous glint in his eye. “Micah, that’s enough outta you, too. Now is not the time.” 

“There ain’t no _better_ time!” Arthur exclaimed, throwing his hands up in furious disbelief. “When are you gonna deal with it, Dutch, if not now?”

“ _After_ we go get John back,” Dutch said, mouth thinning. 

Arthur curled his lip. He very much doubted that. 

“Is that, uh, a good idea, boss?” Micah asked. The bar was dead silent but for the three of them, Arthur and Micah and Dutch. “Like I said, the Raider’s ain’t known for playin’ with their food. Marston’s probably dead already, and sendin’ folks down to Lemoyne lookin’ for him…” 

“If you open your mouth again, Micah Bell,” Arthur said, locking eyes with Micah to show the man that he meant every word, “I’ll kill ya.” 

“That. Is. _Enough_ ,” Dutch growled, getting in between the two, even though Micah was across the room from Arthur. “From _both_ ’a you. Micah, we don’t leave anybody behind, and you know that. Arthur, is now really the best time to pick a fight?” 

Ill temper roiled underneath Arthur’s skin like a pot about to boil over. But Dutch was right. Now wasn’t the time to scatter Micah’s teeth across Lost Country’s sticky floor. Arthur needed to go haul John’s ass out of trouble, and he needed to make sure that Charles would be safe at his house. 

Killing Micah could wait. 

Arthur curled his lip again, vibrating with disdain, but he let Micah be, let Dutch take back control of the room. 

“Arthur, with me,” Dutch finally said. “Missus Grimshaw, get that boy a drink when you’re done patchin’ him up, he’s earned it. Micah, you go round everybody else up, you here? Everybody off the clock today. Sadie, call Hosea and then call Abigail. She ought to know. The rest’a you, make yourselves goddamn useful and finish closin’ up the bar.” 

The silence held for a moment, then everybody broke and scrambled to do as Dutch had said. 

Arthur didn’t really know if huddling in Dutch’s office was the best plan, but he’d pushed the older man far enough tonight, and he knew it. Arguing amongst themselves was only going to hurt John and put Charles at risk. Arthur knew when it was time to knuckle under.

He slid over the bar and followed Dutch through the kitchen and into Dutch’s office. Dutch let Arthur go in first, then shut the door behind him. 

Dutch’s office had always been the space Arthur’d spent the least amount of time in. It wasn’t that Dutch forbade him from going inside or anything--quite the opposite, as Arthur was one of three people in the world who actually had keys to get in--it was just that the office had always been _Dutch’s_ space, and Arthur always felt like he was intruding whenever he was inside. 

Dutch’s office was mostly books. Three entire walls were taken up by bookshelves, most of them handmade and most of them sagging underneath the weight of all the titles crowded on the shelves, and one bookshelf pulled out to reveal a closet that Dutch had converted into a miniature armory. 

His desk was drowning in papers, expense reports and inventory ledgers and pages and pages of Dutch’s personal notes, his thoughts and his dreams and his ramblings all scrawled out in a heavy, right-leaning scrawl. Dutch thrived on the disorder, but it had always driven Arthur a little crazy. 

“What the hell was that, son?” Dutch asked, breaking the silence. Arthur lifted his eyes from the mess on Dutch’s desk and scowled. 

“I know you and Hosea weren’t really behind me on this expansion business, Arthur, but have you _completely_ lost faith in me?” Dutch pressed. He sounded genuinely hurt, but Arthur was too angry to let that stop him. 

“That man came t’my _house_ ,” Arthur spat. “The O’Driscolls know where I live! An’ it’s not just me at that house, Dutch, it’s Charles too, most nights! It’s my horses an’ my chickens an’ even my fuckin’ barn cats. If I hadn’t woken up, hadn’t smelled that butane burnin’, I--” 

Arthur cut himself off before he could say something he’d regret. He _knew_ that his horses and his dogs and his chickens and his cats were just animals, but just because they were animals didn’t mean they deserved to die in a fire, especially not on behalf of Arthur and all his mistakes. 

_An’ Charles was there._

What if the O’Driscoll had decided to set Arthur’s house on fire, instead of the barn? What if the man had left pyromania aside entirely and had come in with a knife or a gun? 

Arthur had made his choices, and he’d made them a long time ago. If an old club rival came and killed Arthur, well, Arthur probably would deserve it. He’d done a lot of shit standing at Dutch’s right hand--he had killed people, and he’d done so without feeling much in the way of remorse. 

But Charles hadn’t been there, hadn’t been involved in all of that, and he didn’t deserve to die over it, not the way Arthur did. 

“You’re afraid,” Dutch said, the realization breaking across his face. Arthur bared his teeth, but he didn’t deny it. There was no point--Dutch knew him too well. “Oh, Arthur,” said Dutch, “I know you must be--I know you’re worried about Charles, but he’s fine, isn’t he?”

“He was when I left him,” Arthur snarled. “But that was near an hour ago now, so who knows what could’a happened since then? Lyra an’ Rooster got hold of the O’Driscoll who set my barn on fire.” Arthur made a short, sharp gesture at the kutte still hanging loose in Dutch’s hands. 

“He’s dead,” Arthur said. Dutch smirked, but Arthur pushed on. “I dunno if he was ridin’ alone, though, an’ maybe by now he’s been missed. Maybe whoever’s waitin’ for him’s got tired of waitin’, and went out t’my house where Charles is waitin’ for me to come home an’ explain--”

“Explain what?” Dutch asked, dangerously. 

“All of this!” Arthur exploded. He threw his hands up, outraged and agitated and past caring what Dutch might think or say or do. “He ain’t an idiot, Dutch. Normal bartenders don’t have crazy biker assholes tryin’ to burn down their properties.” 

“Have you told him?” 

“There ain’t a rule against tellin’ folk,” Arthur said. There wasn’t. Dutch had never demanded silence and secrecy, and Arthur was naturally inclined to keep his mouth shut anyway. He’d never gone off bragging that he was in a one-percenter motorcycle club, not like Mac and Davey and sometimes even John had liked to do.

“Arthur, is that… wise? Tellin’ Charles? I know you must like the man, but--” 

“But nothin’,” Arthur snapped. “He’s involved now. You made sure’a that, havin’ us run guns all over creation.” 

Dutch’s eyes darkened. But he didn’t rise to the bait; he only scrubbed a hand over his face, suddenly looking like what he was--an exhausted man closer to fifty than forty, who was responsible for twenty-some people and had, today, made a mistake. 

Arthur’s heart twisted, just a little bit, but he refused to back down. 

Dutch opened his mouth to say something, but before he could there was a knock on his office door, and Mrs. Grimshaw stuck her head in. 

“You two done yellin’, yet?” she asked. 

Dutch grimaced. “Probably not, no,” he said. 

She shook her head. “Well, Hosea’s here, Dutch, and he’s asking for you. Arthur, your man called. You need to head home, sounds like. Folks’re starting to come in, now that Micah’s making his rounds.” 

Arthur would argue with Dutch, but he wasn’t stupid enough to argue with Mrs. Grimshaw, and his heart had leapt at the mention of Charles. If he’d called, he was still alive and alright, then, which was more than Arthur could ask for in the middle of all of this.

He murmured a “Yes’m” to her and cast Dutch a look over his shoulder as he went.

Dutch was looking right back. _We’ll talk about this later,_ his eyes said, and Arthur nodded. They certainly would. 

“You’ve got two hours, Mister Van der Linde,” Mrs. Grimshaw called at Arthur’s retreating back. “Then you need to get back in here. Dutch, Sean called too--he’s in Emerald Ranch drinkin’, of all places, and he’s offered to make a run down into Rhodes to see what he can sniff out--” 

Her voice cut off as the door swung closed and Arthur left the office, choosing to slip out through the kitchen rather than try his luck out on the floor with everybody worked up into a panic like they were. 

_Jesus,_ he thought, swinging a leg over his bike and facing the dark of the road again. Charles was waiting for him at home, and he’d want to have that conversation, Arthur knew he would. He _deserved_ to have that conversation, no matter how much Arthur would rather avoid it. 

_I should’a been the one t’get snatched up Raiders,_ he thought, morose. _Woulda been more pleasant, I’m sure._

\---

“There was a dead man out in your field,” Charles said without preamble, as Arthur pulled up to his house and cut the engine on his bike. Charles was standing out on the porch, wearing his own clothes for once, and his battered duffle bag was packed neat and zipped at his feet. 

Arthur’s heart sank. 

“Yeah,” Arthur said. “I know. He’s an-- _was_ an O’Driscoll. He’s the one who set the barn on fire.” 

Charles frowned at Arthur, hard. In the time Arthur’d been gone he’d cleaned up a little, changed out of his soot-stained clothes and washed the ash from his face and his hair, but he was haggard, wan, and that far-away look was back in his eyes. 

“What’s an O’Driscoll?” Charles asked, flatly. 

“Rival motorcycle club,” Arthur said. He climbed off his bike but stayed off the porch, feeling cornered despite the field and the sky at his back. Arthur chewed his lip.

“Sorry,” Charles said, and he sounded as pissed as Arthur’d ever heard him, “ _rival_ motorcycle club? You telling me you’re in one?”

“Yes.” Arthur had decided to tell the truth and he didn’t intend to shy away from that promise now, not even on the back foot and cornered with his hackles up, Charles’s anger making Arthur want to curl up his shoulders and shrivel away, or start swinging. Arthur hadn’t decided yet and didn’t have the time. “We all were. Are. All’a us down at Lost Country. Dutch’s Boys Em-Cee.” 

Charles stared. 

Arthur grimaced. “Heard’a us, huh?” 

“Every big-rigger between here and California’s heard of Dutch’s Boys,” said Charles, flatly. “Your Dutch is _that_ Dutch?” 

Arthur winced. “Yeah,” he said. Back in the early eighties, a favorite gambit of Dutch and Hosea’s had been to run down long-haul truckers on empty stretches of highway and boost the shit they’d been hauling. They’d stuck to electronics, mostly, hit up trucks carrying shit for big box trucks, but Arthur wasn’t surprised to hear that word had spread among other truckers, even though Dutch’s folk had stopped picking off truckers some time around ‘84 or ‘85. 

“But that was--that was all the way over in Oregon and NorCal,” Charles said. “You’re all… here.” 

“We are,” Arthur said. “An’ we’re--we ain’t one-percenters anymore, not really, Charles. We’ve been makin’ an honest go of it, more’r less.” 

“I’m sorry,” Charles interrupted. “You all sell--you sell _coffee._ You sell shit beer. You-- _you_ \--keep horses and cats and goats. You’re telling me that it’s all--it’s all some kind of front? You’re in a fucking outlaw biker gang?”

“Motorcycle club,” Arthur muttered. He dragged a hang through his hair. He wanted to explain, _needed_ to explain, but all his careful arguments and thoughts had flown apart in the face of Charles’s fury. Arthur could understand that fury, too, a little. Charles had gone to bed last night thinking that Arthur was a normal man, and he’d woken to a burning barn. “We ain’t--it ain’t a front, Charles, I swear it ain’t. We really do sell coffee an’ beer. I keep the horses ‘cause I love ‘em, not ‘cause--not ‘cause I’m tryin’ to hide who I am.”

“Who you are,” Charles echoed, jaw set. Arthur had to fight down another wince. “And who are you, Arthur?” 

“I’m--” Arthur’s words caught in his throat again. “I’m still me,” he said, a little helplessly. “It’s jus’--there’s more t’me than I told you about. We don’t--we really did all move to Valentine to turn things around, Charles. We don’t talk about club shit because there _ain’t_ any club shit still goin’ on. Dutch disbanded us six years ago.” 

“Then why,” Charles said, low and dangerous, “did I just have to bury a dead body? Why did somebody--some old _club rival_ \--come here and set the barn on fire?”

“You buried him?” Arthur asked, surprised. 

Charles lost his temper, then.

“Of course I buried him!” Charles shouted. “I didn’t know when you were coming back! I didn’t know _if_ you were coming back, or if anybody else had seen the fire and sent Ee-Em-Ess sniffing around! What was I supposed to do, leave it out there until a cop showed up?” 

“Well, no, ‘course not, but I had a plan for it, I know a feller--”

“You know a feller who can help you get rid of a dead body.” The expression in Charles’s eyes was thunderously dark. 

“Yes?” Arthur hazarded, on the back foot again. 

“From your days as an outlaw biker?” 

“Not… exactly,” Arthur said. “He, well. He owes me a debt. Me an’ Sadie hustled him in a shootin’ contest, once, an’ he didn’t have the money to pay, so he offered us a favor instead. He’s got a pig farm south’a Valentine, I was gonna take care of it when I got back, but I had to let the others know, had to warn ‘em in case there were more O’Driscolls ridin’ ‘round--” 

“This is insanity,” Charles muttered, cutting Arthur off at the pass. He bent and picked up his duffle bag. His jaw was set. 

“Charles, wait,” Arthur said, holding his hands out. He hadn’t told Charles any of it, hadn’t said anything that he’d wanted to say, and panic clawed at the bottom of his chest. “I ain’t--I ain’t doin’ a good job of explainin’ things, if you’d just wait an’ listen--”

“I don’t wanna hear anymore about it,” Charles said, flatly. “D’you know what could happen to me if my boss found out I was hanging around with fucking outlaw bikers? He’d take my Cee-Dee-Ell before I could blink, Arthur. He’d take _everything._ You know how much I still owe on my rig?”

“Charles,” Arthur tried again. 

But Charles shook his head, firm, and stepped down off the porch. Arthur stepped back, instinctively giving him space, not wanting to hem Charles in, and Charles walked right past him and wrenched open the door of the Bonneville. 

“No, Arthur,” Charles said. “I can’t be involved. I’ve already--no.” And he climbed into his car, slammed the door, and threw it in reverse out of the driveway as soon as the Bonneville spluttered to life, disappearing in screech of tires and a cloud of dust. 

Arthur stood rooted to the spot like someone had driven nails through his feet, watching as Charles disappeared. He hadn’t even had the chance to explain what else had happened last night, hadn’t had the chance to say that John’d gone missing, that Arthur had to go get him because he wasn’t sure anybody else would, that Arthur was sorry, that Arthur would _fix this,_ he just had to figure out how. 

All the things Arthur had meant to say shriveled up and died on his tongue, and when the last bit of dust settled and Charles was well and truly gone, Arthur uprooted himself from where he’d been abandoned and trudged inside. 

He suddenly had more time on his hands than he’d thought. 

\---

“I heard Missus Grimshaw gave you a timeframe,” Hosea said, his voice warped by the old phone. He’d called about half an hour after Charles had left and Arthur had debated just ripping the phone out of the wall and pitching it into the cow pond, but he figured that he shouldn’t. 

“Yeah,” said Arthur. “A few hours, thereabouts. I oughta--I’ll be headin’ in soon, Hosea. There’s jus’ some… some things I need t’handle here, first.” 

Hosea snorted. “Take the morning,” he said. “I’ve talked Dutch down. Sean’s in Lemoyne, lookin’ for information. Dutch’s gettin’ everybody together here at eleven.” 

“Alright,” Arthur said. He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to be alone in his house for the next few hours. “Alright, Hosea. He say anythin’ about the O’Driscolls?”

“I probably have more information on that front than he does,” Hosea said. He sighed. “Arthur, listen, I know you’re upset, and you’ve got a right to be, but… But the O’Driscolls just ain’t an organized club anymore.” 

“The man who set fire to my barn had an O’Driscoll kutte!” Arthur exclaimed. 

“I know, Arthur, I’ve seen it,” Hosea snapped. “Listen, I’m not sayin’ that he _wasn’t_ an O’Driscoll, I’m sayin’ that there’s no club behind him. The whole charter fell apart when Colm went inside. The man who came to your place wasn’t there on Colm’s orders, or on anybody’s--like as not he saw you out and about, followed you around a little, and decided to try and settle an old score.”

“Are you sure ‘bout that?” Arthur asked, sharply. 

“Sure enough,” Hosea said. “I’ve called around, Arthur. Nobody’s heard anything from the O’Driscolls in ten, twelve years. Colm’s still in supermax and all his lackeys drifted off, found other clubs or died or got pinched themselves.” 

Something flickered in Arthur’s mind. 

“Other clubs?” he asked. Hosea said nothing, but Arthur could imagine him nodding. “Other clubs like the Lemoyne Raiders?” 

Hosea was quiet for a minute. 

Then he said, “Well, shit. That I don’t know, Arthur. The Raiders’re certainly vicious enough, I suppose. Colm prided himself on taking Irish boys and Irish boys only under his patch, but I suppose the Raiders wouldn’t care about nationality, so long as the color was white.” 

“So I could be right?” Arthur asked. “There’s no way this was a coincidence, Hosea.” 

“You could be… not wrong,” said Hosea. “Don’t get your boxers in a twist just yet, Arthur. I’ll make some calls. You take care of what you need to take care of. I’ll see you in a bit.”

The old man hung up abruptly, likely to go plumb some of his less-than-savory contacts for information. 

_Holy shit,_ Arthur thought, putting the receiver down gently. He dug his palms into his eyes. _Holy fuckin’ shit._ He knew that he was right, instinctively. Maybe not all of the O’Driscolls had patched over to the Lemoyne Raiders, but there were only so many outlaw clubs in this part of the world. Some of them must’ve gone south and found themselves a new club in Lemoyne. 

And when one-time O’Driscolls, now riding under Raider patches, had seen one of Dutch’s Boy’s come driving south with a truck full of doughnuts, handguns shoved into the linings of the bags, somebody’d opened their mouths. 

Somebody’d put two and two together. 

_An’ now Johnny’s payin’ for it,_ Arthur thought. He took his hands away from his eyes and tried to force himself to focus, but the sudden, deafening silence in his house was plenty distracting on its own. 

Sappy and pathetic as it was, Arthur’s house was emptier without Charles in it. Everything was plainer, more colorless. Arthur’s mug of coffee was lonely by itself on the counter and his dishes were lonely in the sink. His boots were lonely by the door and his hip was lonely without Charles’s hand on it, warmth burning through his jeans to linger pressed close to the bone.

 _This is what you get for waitin’ so long to tell him, you fool,_ he told himself. That was the worst part, was that he could understand _why_ Charles was so upset. There’d been half a hundred times to tell the man just exactly who Arthur was, what he did, where he came from, but Arthur’d danced around it every time, too used to protecting Dutch and Hosea to even think that he might’ve been lying to Charles, to think that he’d been prioritizing his own comfort and desire for secrecy over Charles’s happiness and safety. 

Arthur’s lip curled, self-loathing a familiar prickle in his chest. 

_You never change, Morgan._ A lifetime of hard lessons hadn’t taught Arthur shit all, not really. He’d lied to Mary and she’d left him; he’d lied to Charles, at least through omission, and now Charles had left him too. 

_Ain’t nothin’ for it, I guess._

Arthur didn’t have time to feel sorry for himself. There’d be days and weeks to lick his wounds later, after they’d fetched John. If Arthur was going to go down into Lemoyne Raider territory after Marston, he was going to need a clear head. His heartbreak could wait. 

_It’s gonna have to wait,_ he thought. _Ain’t no_ could _about it._

John’s life was at risk. Hell, so was Arthur’s, and Dutch’s, and the life of everybody who went down into Lemoyne to get John out of there. 

_If my head ain’t on right, somebody could die._

The thought was sobering enough that Arthur was able to bundle up all his grief and guilt and shove it away, burying it deep somewhere behind his ribs, somewhere were it was mostly out of sight and out of mind, little more than a sore ache in his body. 

Arthur wasn’t losing anybody else on his watch. 

Arthur, grief compartmentalized, finished his coffee, rinsed out his mug to leave it in the sink beside his lonesome dishes, and went about getting ready. He put away the goats and the chickens and left the dogs in the house, locking the front door behind him. The barn was a mess, the front paddock a wreck of foam and mud, so Arthur moved all of his horses into the second paddock, hitched Reliance to the fence next to a feed bucket so she wouldn’t go wandering around on a bum leg, and put the boarders in the third paddock. 

Charles had said that he’d dealt with the body, and Arthur trusted him still, trusted him even though Charles had left, so he didn’t go looking for it even though he figured he probably ought to know where a dead man was buried on his lands. Arthur’d shut off the part of his mind that protested, that cared about such things, and he got on with leaving the matter at rest well enough. 

He said his goodbyes to the horses, scratching Lyra’s nose, combing a few tangles out of Blue’s mane, leaning against Rooster’s narrow shoulder to borrow some of his strength. The horses were gentle with him, even the Arabians. Lyra lipped his fingers and Rooster nipped Arthur’s ear. Getting everything settled had taken some time, so Arthur had only an hour or so before he was due in with the others. 

“Be good,” he told the horses. “I’ll see ya soon. Tomorrow, maybe.” 

From there he rode down to Valentine, taking the long way around, riding beside the river, the trees, the high bluffs he loved so much, and stopped at the bank before he went in to Lost Country, determined to make sure that if things in Lemoyne went south, everything on his end at least was taken care of. 

Even though he’d been here for six years now, the tellers always got nervous whenever Arthur set foot in the bank. He had a look about him, apparently, that made most folks assume he was going to try and take their money. 

Arthur cleared his throat, ignoring the stares, and waited in line. 

Once the last person ahead of him had been helped, Arthur stepped up to the teller, a spotty kid of maybe twenty who eyed Arthur nervously and said, voice cracking, “What can I, uh, what can I do for you today, sir?” 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “I need a piece of paper,” he said. “An’ a notary.” 

The kid nodded, relieved that he wasn’t going to have to deal with Arthur, and disappeared for a moment, returning with a sheet of white printer paper and an older man at his elbow. 

“May I ask what you need notarized today, sir?” the older man asked. 

“Updatin’ my will,” said Arthur. He took the sheet of paper from the kid, fished a pen out of his pocket, and wrote, _I, Arthur Van der Linde, leave all of my earthly possessions to Charles Smith, currently a resident of Room 2B, the Saints Hotel, Valentine._

He listed his house’s address as well as Hamish’s cabin, jotted down his bike’s VIN and license plate, listed the contents of his savings, named each of his horses and the dogs. 

“Oh,” the younger teller said, clearing his throat again. “Are you, uh, are you sick or something, mister?” 

“No,” Arthur said. He didn’t elaborate, and the look on Arthur’s face scared the kid off asking any more questions. 

Once he’d listed just about all the earthly possessions Arthur could remember, he scrutinized the will again, bit his lip, and added another name to the first line. 

_I, Arthur Van der Linde, leave all of my earthly possessions to Charles Smith, currently a resident of Room 2B, the Saints Hotel, Valentine, with the exception of $2,000 and my books._

_I leave $2,000 and all my books to Jack Marston, currently a resident of 3852 Walnut Street, Valentine, New Hanover, to be given when he turns eighteen._

Satisfied, Arthur signed his name in a great untidy scrawl and turned the page over to the notary, who read it all, looked Arthur up and down, shrugged, and stamped it. The notary signed it as a witness, dated the thing and offered it back. 

“Put it in my deposit box,” Arthur said. He had no interest in carrying his will around with him. Arthur didn’t intend to die getting John back, but if he did he wanted--

 _I want the horses to be taken care of,_ Arthur thought. _I want someone to enjoy the house as much as I do. And god knows John ain’t savin’ any money to put Jackie through college. Somebody’s got to._

Business finished, Arthur left the bank without robbing anybody, much to the relief of the tellers and all the folks in line. He swung himself back up onto his bike, kicked her awake, and took her down the road to Lost Country, which looked sad and dusty in the daylight. 

Despite the big red CLOSED sign on the door, the parking lot was full. 

_Dutch’s called everybody in,_ Arthur thought. He parked Hosea’s truck in the back and slipped inside, not even giving himself the time to smoke a cigarette and steady his nerves before he rejoined the others. 

The kitchen was empty but for Mrs. Grimshaw and Pearson. Mrs. Grimshaw was brewing up an industrial-sized pot of coffee and Pearson had some eggs and bacon going on the griddle, even though now it was near eleven and shading more towards the lunch hour than breakfast. 

“You’re about the last one in, Arthur,” said Mrs. Grimshaw briskly, shoving a cup of coffee into his hands. “Dutch’s got everybody out on the floor. He’s waitin’ on you and Sean.” 

Arthur sighed noisily. “‘Course we’re waitin’ on Sean,” he grumbled. 

The rest of the gang was waiting for him when Arthur walked in, as Mrs. Grimshaw had promised. All of the women but Sadie were crammed into a corner both, bracketing a pale, white-knuckled Abigail, who had Jack in her lap. 

Most of the men had arrayed themselves on barstools or taken tables in twos and threes. Javier sat at the bar next to an empty barstool he’d obviously saved for Arthur. Hosea was at the bar too, old and worn, and Lenny sat on Javier’s other side. Mrs. Grimshaw had cleaned the kid up nice, washed the blood from his hairline and taped up the cut there, a white butterfly bandage peeking out from beneath his tight curls. 

Micah and Bill were sitting together at one of the tables, heads bent close towards a conversation Arthur had no interest in. Sadie’d taken up a table of her own and was methodically cleaning a sawed-off. Kieran had jammed himself into a corner, watchful and twitchy, and Uncle dozed against a wall. 

Dutch was behind the bar, head bowed, lost in thought. 

Arthur let him be and went to sit between Javier and Hosea. 

“Arthur,” Javier greeted, quietly. “Welcome back.” 

Arthur grunted. “How’re things?” 

“Tense,” Javier murmured, keeping his voice pitched low so he didn’t rile anybody up. “Folks are nervous. It’s been a minute since we’ve had to think about club rivalries and kidnappings and shit, you know?” 

“I know,” Arthur said, grimly. He looked Javier up and down. Javier was unflappable under pressure. He was about as even-keeled as they came, calm and cool and always watching, always listening. 

“Any word on John?”

“That’s where Sean is,” Hosea said, from Arthur’s other side Arthur and Javier both craned their necks around to look at him. 

“‘An’ he ain’t killed himself yet?” Arthur asked. 

Hosea scowled at him. “Not as of an hour ago, no,” he said. “Sean’ll be fine. He was the right choice to send down there, and he was already halfway over there anway.” Javier and Arthur traded looks. 

“Nobody was going to talk to you, Javier, no offense,” Hosea said apologetically. Javier and Arthur both grimaced, but Hosea had a point. Nobody in Rhodes would tell a man from the backwoods of Michoacán anything. Dutch probably hadn’t sent Lenny back in for the same reason. 

“Sean ain’t a good ol’ boy, though,” Arthur said. Not like Bill was, not like Arthur could play at. “Why’d Dutch send him? I coulda gone down, if he’d asked.” Arthur would have preferred to spend his morning slowly feeding himself into a woodchipper, in all honesty, rather than having a fight with Charles. He hated Lemoyne, but it wouldn't been a pleasant little day trip compared to the feeling of watching Charles drive off.

“Sean’s good at getting people to talk,” Hosea said. 

Arthur snorted. “Good at gettin’ people drunk, y’mean.” 

“Same difference, in this case,” said Hosea, which was fair enough. Arthur conceded the point. “And anyway sendin’ you or Bill seemed like a bad idea. Sean wasn’t around back in the day, not properly. I don’t think he ever scraped with the Raiders.”

 _Not like you did,_ Arthur heard. He grunted. Another fair point, but it didn’t make him feel no better, being stuck here with his nerves all tangled up while Sean poked and prodded his way around Lemoyne. 

“We gotta be _careful,_ Hosea,” Arthur warned. “Gettin’ Johnny back, I mean. This ain’t--shit, this ain’t nineteen-eighty. You said it yourself. The new century’s comin’, an’ our life? Our way?”

“I know,” Hosea said, rubbing his chin with a grimace. 

Back in the old days, back when the idea of the club had first coalesced and they’d run around the western United States like goddamn cowboys, only the big cities had bothered with shit like DNA testing. That had been ten, fifteen years ago, though, and now it seemed like even poor, rural states like New Hanover could trot out blood splatter analysis and DNA and forensics to convict a man of jaywalking, let alone murder. 

“If we go down to Lemoyne guns blazin’, it’s over for us,” Arthur said. He shook his head. “I ain’t heard whether or not the Eff-Bee-Eye is still lookin’ at Dutch for that thing in eighty-nine, but you’ve had Ay-Tee-Eff sniffin’ ‘round, an’ if we go to wherever the Raiders’ve got John an’ shoot the place up, you can bet the feds’ll be on us like flies on shit.” 

“Descriptive, Arthur,” said Hosea, bone dry. “But you’re not wrong. We’ve been careful here, real careful, and you’ve got a good head on your shoulders--don’t look at me like that, you’re a fine man, Arthur, and you _can_ think things through, most of the time--but some of the other boys…”

“We’ve gotta figure out how to keep Micah here,” Arthur said, brow furrowing. Back before they’d come to Valentine, Mac and Davey had been the wild cards. Arthur had been too, a bit, but he’d usually waited for Dutch’s say-so before beating a man bloody. Mac and Davey had had the combined higher reasoning power of a rabid dog. 

_An’ Micah ain’t no better,_ Arthur thought. Micah spilled blood because he thought it was fun. Because he liked the power. If Micah went down to Lemoyne, there’d be Raiders dead and while Arthur usually wouldn’t give a shit about a racist shitheel get what was coming to him, if Raiders died Dutch’s folk would be exposed. 

“Dutch is gonna want Micah with him,” Hosea warned. “He likes Micah’s drive.” 

“If we take Micah, Micah’s gonna lose his shit and take Bill mad with him,” Arthur said flatly. Bill was a follower. “Maybe Sean too, if Sean gets riled enough. I’m gonna have my damn hands full keepin’ Dutch from killin’ anybody. I cain’t worry ‘bout Micah too, an’ he won’t listen to anybody else. Sorry, Javier,” Arthur added. Javier had leaned in and was listening intently. Fortunately he liked Micah about as much as Arthur did, so Javier only shook his head. 

“You’re not wrong, brother,” he said. “Micah doesn’t give a shit what I say. He’s scared of you, though.” 

_Good,_ Arthur thought, setting his jaw. He caught sight of his reflection in the mirror behind the bar and startled himself. The man he saw looking back at him had a snarl on his face, had green ice for eyes. Arthur hadn’t seen himself looking so mean in months now. 

_Charles prob’ly wouldn’t even recognize me,_ he thought, looking away from his reflection. 

“Keep him here then, Hosea,” Arthur said. “Tell Dutch--I dunno, tell Dutch you wanna keep a good gun by the door in case anybody gets any ideas. Raiders, O’Driscolls--they were _outlaws_ back in the day, wilder than even we were. No O’Driscoll ever shed a tear at the thought’a killin’ women an’ children.” 

“That’s an idea.” Hosea rubbed his chin again. “If John’s gone and Dutch is taking you with him, probably you and Bill too, Javier.” 

Javier nodded again. The look in his eyes told Arthur that Javier would go anyway. He and John had always been close--Arthur was eight years older than John and six older than Javier, though Dutch had picked up John first and Javier third. 

John and Javier had always had more in common; their ages, their similarly hellish childhoods, their easy charisma. Javier had taken more after Hosea, fondness for fishing and all, and John had taken more after Dutch, but they had always been close. 

“You should take Lenny,” Arthur said, looking at Hosea. “He’s a smart kid. He ain’t gonna lose his shit like Micah does. You oughta have somebody here with ya who’s not gonna start shootin’ up the place like a Clint Eastwood movie, if O’Driscoll boys or Raiders do come callin’. Sadie too. She’s fiercer’n a bear.” 

“Keep Kieran here too,” Javier said lowly. “He’d probably be a liability out in Lemoyne, but if you give him something to do he’d appreciate it, and he’d do it well. He’s eager. Just young.”

 _They’re all young,_ Arthur thought, and he could see Hosea having the same thought too. Arthur and Micah and Bill were all old, but the rest were just _kids,_ really. Javier and John had done their time and earned their kuttes, but Lenny was just eighteen. Kieran was barely twenty. Sadie was John’s age, twenty-eight, but she walked around like her life had already ended. 

_Kids,_ Arthur thought. 

Was this what Hosea had thought the first time Arthur’d put on his kutte? The first time Arthur’d slung a leg over the back of a Harley? The first time he came home with blood under his fingernails? 

In some small, terrible way, Arthur was glad that Isaac had died before Arthur could’ve turned him into _this_ , into an angry man surrounded by angry men, about to go and spill other angry men’s blood. 

_I ain’t sure how Hosea does it._

“Sean’s due back in any minute now,” Hosea said, the significance of Arthur’s thoughts lost to him, stuck as it always was behind Arthur’s teeth. “If we’re gonna make this work--”

“I got Sadie an’ Kieran,” Arthur said, standing up. “You get Dutch. Javier, you round up the boys who’ll be goin’. Make sure we’re all on the same page. No killin’, ‘less John’s been killed.” 

“Done,” Javier said, climbing to his feet and heading over towards Bill, who’d always had an odd soft spot for Javier. 

Arthur went over to Sadie first. 

She raised her chin when she saw him coming. “War council’s broken up already?” she asked, tone dry. “I’m fightin’, Arthur, don’t try an’ talk me out of it.” 

“Wouldn’t dare,” said Arthur, honestly. He knew better than most what a good card Sadie was to have up your sleeve. “I was jus’ gonna tell ya-- _ask_ ya--where to do it, is all.” 

“I’m listening,” Sadie said, leaning in. Her eyes shone with a wolf’s hunger. 

“I cain’t let Dutch take Micah with us,” Arthur murmured, leaning in close so that nobody else could overhear. “If we take Micah it’ll be a goddamn bloodbath, and we cain’t have that, not anymore. Our days’a sowin’ blood an’ terror are long over.” 

“What’s this got to do with me?” Sadie asked suspiciously. 

Arthur grimaced. “Hosea’s gonna have Dutch keep Micah here, as protection,” he said. “O’Driscolls comin’ to my house, Raiders snatchin’ John, that’s a lot of old enemies suddenly creepin’ ‘round, an’ Hosea an’ I think there’s a fair shot one or both of them’ll come here lookin’ for trouble while most of us boys head out to get John.” 

“You want me to stay an’ be _actual_ protection,” Sadie said. 

Arthur nodded, grateful she’d understood. “With Micah any fight’s got a fifty-fifty chance of turnin’ into the Oh-Kay Corral,” he said. “He’s as like to shoot Hosea an’ the women tryin’ to pull some bullshit move as he is to shoot an O’Driscoll. _You_ \--”

“Don’t miss,” Sadie finished, nodding. She eyed Arthur and for a second he thought she was going to argue with him, demand to go raiding the Raiders, but then the fierce blood-hungry spark in her eyes faded. “Fine,” she said. 

Arthur let out a great sigh of relief. He probably could’ve won an argument, if it had come to that, but he was glad that it hadn’t. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll--I’ll owe you one.” 

“Naw, this is for John,” Sadie replied, smiling a little. “I’ll take it outta _his_ hide, don’t you worry.”

Arthur smiled at her. 

Arthur hadn’t loved Eliza like Sadie had loved her Jake, but she and Arthur were kindred spirits of a sort anyway. They’d always understood each other.

“Who else’re you gettin’ to stay?” Sadie asked, setting her sawed-off down on the table. 

Arthur grimaced. “Lenny’s stayin’,” he said, tilting his head over towards the kid. “An’ Kieran, too.” 

Sadie snorted, deeply unimpressed. “Lenny’s got stones, I’ll give him that,” she said, “but the only thing Kieran Duffy’s got is a yellow belly an’ a small fuckin’ dick.” 

“I wouldn’t know,” said Arthur, as delicately as he could. He shrugged with one shoulder. “He’s been doin’ alright runnin’ deliveries. Javier trusts him.” 

“It ain’t gonna be Javier’s neck on the line if Kieran breaks and runs,” Sadie growled under her breath, but she subsided when Arthur shot her a reproachful look. 

“He’s jus’ young, is all,” Arthur said, repeating Hosea and Javier’s words. “Bein’ young ain’t a crime. We all was young, once. He’ll grow into himself.”

Sadie snorted again. “When was the last time _you_ ran from a fight?” she asked, pointed. “I bet you was a hell of a lot younger than nineteen.” 

Arthur’d stopped running away from fights after his father had died. Fighting back against his father had been futile, and Arthur’d always been a little concerned that one day Lyle’d be too deep in his cups and would hit Arthur harder than he’d meant to. Going limp and unresisting had been the best way to get the drunk old bastard to lose interest. 

Going limp in juvie or in any of the group homes Arthur’d been dumped in had just meant that Arthur got his teeth kicked in _and_ all his shit stolen, so he’d dropped that habit quick and had instead picked up the habit of fighting until either his attacker was down or Arthur was. 

“I grew up a bit rougher’n Kieran Duffy, Sadie,” Arthur said, patiently. “ _An’_ when I was his age I had about five inches and forty pounds of muscle more’n he does now. It was a bit easier for me to stand up for myself.” 

“Well, clearly you’ve decided already an’ me gripin’ about it ain’t gonna change things,” Sadie harrumphed, rolling her eyes. “But if I get shot coverin’ his ass, you _are_ gonna owe me, Arthur.” 

“An’ I’ll pay you back,” Arthur said. He held up his middle finger. “Scout’s honor, I promise.” 

“Tch,” Sadie said, and shoved him. 

Snickering to himself, Arthur left her be and went over to Kieran’s table next. The kid saw Arthur coming and hunched in on himself a little, nervous and unable to hide it. Arthur heaved a sigh and sat down next to him, forcing himself to slouch his shoulders and relax his scowl. 

“Breathe, kid,” he said. “I ain’t gonna bite’cha. How’re you holdin’ up?”

“Uh, fine, Mister--Mister Arthur,” Kieran said, stumbling over his words a little. Arthur resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. 

“Arthur’s fine, kid,” he said. 

“Sure,” Kieran agreed, folding fast, offering Arthur a nervous smile. “Uh, Arthur. What can I--what d’you need?” 

Arthur took pity on him and picked his words carefully, trying not to sound like he thought that Kieran was useless at best and a miserable coward at worst. “Me an’ some of the other boys,” he began, watching Kieran’s face, “are gonna ride out soon, go an’ get John back.”

He watched Kieran’s face closely. The boy went white as a sheet, his eyes flickering from side to side, but he didn’t break and run and he didn’t start babbling or anything, so Arthur begrudgingly extended Kieran the benefit of the doubt and said, “If you wanna ride with us, you can, there’s a place for ya, but I also… well.”

Arthur cleared his throat and did his best to look a bit embarrassed. He tilted his head towards Hosea. “I’m a bit worried ‘bout leavin’ the old man,” he said.

Kieran’s eyes flickered to Hosea and then back to Arthur. “Hosea’s not goin’?” he asked.

Arthur shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, he prob’ly wants to go, but me an’ Dutch think that there’s a good chance that somebody--an O’Driscoll, more Raiders, god knows who else--might think’a comin’ by _here_ to stir up trouble while the rest’a us’re out fetchin’ John.”

Kieran’s eyes widened in understanding. 

He still didn’t run, though, so Arthur pushed on. “I ain’t feel right, leavin’ Hosea here by himself without anybody watchin’ his back,” he said. “Me an’ Javier’re roundin’ up a few folks who’d be willin’ to stay and help Hosea keep an eye on the place.” 

Kieran swallowed. “So… I can ride out with you and… and Mister Van der Linde, and the others, or I can stay with Hosea and guard the shop?” 

“Or y’can go home an’ hunker down there,” said Arthur with a shrug, watching Kieran closely. Arthur believed in loyalty over most anything else, but loyalty couldn’t be forced. If Kieran was too nervous to stay and watch over Lost Country--watch over Hosea, who Arthur cared about more than any shitty old dive bar--Arthur didn’t want him around. 

“I’ll, uh,” said Kieran, his voice cracking a bit. He scowled at himself, surprising Arthur, and sat up straighter. “I’ll stay,” he said. “I’ll--I’ll help Hosea keep this place safe, Mister Arthur. I promise.” 

Then he deflated a little bit, nervous again, and rubbed the back of his neck. “I, uh, probably wouldn’t be much good to you on the road anyway,” he mumbled. 

Arthur looked at Kieran for a minute, knowing that his face was impassive and flat, and then when Kieran started to fidget, unable to stop himself, Arthur nodded. 

“Good man. Hosea’ll be happy t’have you, Kieran,” Arthur said, gruffly. He nudged the boy gently with his boot. “You’ll do fine.”

Kieran _beamed_ at Arthur, which made Arthur feel like kind of an asshole. He hadn’t been easy on the boy these last few months, hadn’t given Kieran enough credit. Not everybody came out of their shit like Arthur had, spitting mad and ready to take on the whole world. 

“When Dutch’s done talkin’, go see Hosea,” Arthur told Kieran, standing up again. “He’ll make sure you’re ready for anythin’. Good?”

“Good,” Kieran agreed, plainly trying to play at bravery. Arthur let him, feeling bad enough about misjudging Kieran that he let the kid keep his pride. He had to fight back the urge to ruffle Kieran’s hair like he would Lenny’s or Sean’s. 

His half of the arrangements taken care of, Arthur rejoined Hosea at the bar. Sean had returned, apparently no worse for the wear, and was speaking quietly with Dutch in a corner by the kitchen. Hosea’d taken the time to pour himself a beer, and he raised his glass at Arthur grimly. 

“Dutch’s on board,” Hosea said. “He agrees that the O’Driscolls or the Raiders might make a run here, if they think there’s nobody around but the women.” 

“He agreed to part with Micah?” 

“Reluctantly,” said Hosea. 

Arthur snorted. “Sadie’s up to speed,” he reported. “Though if Micah gives her any shit she might shoot him.” 

“Could solve a few problems,” Hosea muttered, and Arthur cracked a tired smile. 

“It could,” he said. “Kieran’s agreed to stay, too, and don’t seem too spooked by the idea of it comin’ to a firefight.” 

“Kieran’ll do what he has to.” Hosea took a deep drink off his glass. Arthur watched, a little jealous. He wanted a beer or even a slug of whiskey, something to take the edge of his nerves, off the awful, building anticipation that was starting to itch between Arthur’s knuckles, off the memory of the argument he’d had with Charles. 

“Will you?” Hosea asked, quietly. 

Arthur stilled. 

“I know it’s been a while for you, Arthur,” Hosea continued, voice pitched so low he was nearly inaudible. “You were--you were havin’ a hard time of it, before we all came here.” 

The hairs on the back of Arthur’s neck stuck up and he had to resist the urge to peel back his teeth. 

But Hosea was right. Hosea was right. Part of the reason they’d all had to settle here, in this shithole in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from anything they’d ever really known, was because Arthur’d been struggling to hold it together. 

Every time he’d gotten into a fight, he’d flirted with losing his mind. With going mad, like a rabid dog, and tearing into anything and everything that got in his way. Arthur had gone from being an asset--Dutch’s favorite attack dog, clever and ruthless and capable--to being a liability, to being a danger to himself and to everyone around him. 

Before things had gone really south and the FBI had started sniffing around, Hosea’d been trying to help. He’d pried Arthur away from Dutch’s side of things, which had primarily involved gunrunning, legbreaking and raids on other clubs, and pulled Arthur into his own side of the operation. 

Hosea had been their fixer. He could talk just about anybody out of their hard-earned money and delighted in schemes, grifts and cons of every shape and size. Arthur’d never had any interest in playacting or scamming but it _had_ been good to get away from the rest of it for a while. From the bloodletting, the fighting. From expecting to catch a bullet every time he swung a leg over his bike and rode out. 

“I’ll be fine,” Arthur grunted. He slid Hosea a sideways look. “I got too much to worry about to really lose it, Hosea,” he said, quietly. “Somebody’s gotta make sure John gets out alright, and I ain’t sure--” Arthur paused, struggling to say it. _I ain’t sure it’s gonna be Dutch._

Hosea understood anyway. “I know,” he said, and finished his beer. “Christ, when did we get so old?” 

Arthur managed a smile. “You’ve always been old,” he said. “I’ve jus’ been catchin’ up to you, is all.” 

Hosea grunted, but if he had been about to say anything else it was cut off by Dutch, who brushed past Arthur’s back, stopping briefly to grip the back of Arthur’s neck and give him a rough, grounding shake before Dutch hopped up onto the bar and turned around to face them all. 

Arthur leaned back a little, trying to gage Dutch’s mood. 

“My friends,” Dutch began, looking each person in the eye. He sounded sad, sounded appropriately solemn, but Arthur couldn’t tell anymore if Dutch was being genuine or not. 

His heart twisted. 

“My friends,” Dutch said again. “As most of you have no doubt heard by now, last night was not a good night for us. For our family.” Dutch began to pace back and forth across the bartop. Arthur had the absurd thought that the county health inspector would probably shit himself and had to squash that thought before he started to laugh. 

_Christ, you idiot,_ he told himself, trying to pay attention, _now’s not the time to crack up an’ lose it._

“When we all came here and started a new life for ourselves--a _prosperous_ life for ourselves--we knew we were leavin’ some unfinished business behind us,” Dutch continued. “Not all of you were with me when we lived on the road, going wherever we pleased, but most of you were, and most of you remember.

“We have always tried to live our lives _our_ way,” Dutch said. Arthur had forgotten what a good speaker Dutch was. He traded a look with Hosea, whose eyebrows had gone up. 

“Now our way of livin’ is a little different from other people’s,” Dutch said. A few folks--Arthur didn’t turn around to see who, but he thought he heard Karen, Sean and Bill--murmured in agreement. “It ain’t the way of livin’ the You-Ess government thinks people oughta live.”

“Fuck the You-Ess government, then,” Sean chortled, and Dutch spared him a smile.

“It was _our_ way, though, and it suited us,” Dutch continued, pressing on. He stopped pacing and swept a fierce gaze over them all, and even though Arthur knew that this whole mess was Dutch’s fault--if Dutch had listened to Hosea or Arthur, had been more cautious, hadn’t let Micah talk him into his crazy ideas of expansion, John wouldn’t have been in Lemoyne--he couldn’t help but be drawn in, attention caught. 

Dutch had always been like that. Half-mad, ambitious, clever and sly, but compelling. Interesting. _Right,_ a lot of the time. Dutch had been _right._ There hadn’t been a place for Arthur in the world until Dutch had carved one out for him. There hadn’t been room for any of them, John or Hosea or Bill or Javier, Lenny, Sadie, Karen, Tilly, _any_ of them, until Dutch had forced the world to make room. 

“But even though the way we lived suited us, we did make our enemies,” Dutch acknowledged, starting to pace across the bartop again. “The folk who were jealous of us. The folk who wanted what we had. The government’s lapdogs, trying to enforce their order on us, with _no_ right to tell us how to live our lives.”

The murmurs of agreement came louder now, from all sides. Nobody in this room had fit in with the normal world. That was what had brought them to Dutch. America, in all of her many forms, hadn’t wanted any of them, so they’d all found shelter behind Dutch instead. 

Arthur felt it pulling at him now, that old loyalty. That _conviction,_ that Dutch alone was right, that Dutch alone was a bulwark against the things that would eat Arthur alive--poverty, abandonment, his father’s upraised fist, his own temper turning inward and chewing Arthur up without Dutch aiming it, pointing it outward like a spear or the barrel of a gun. 

“We’ve had six years of peace,” Dutch said quietly. “Six years of good livin’, bought with our concessions to the government, to _society_.” He spat the word like it burned his lips. “We’ve paid our county fees. We pay our rents, our car notes, our alimony, in exchange for bein’ left alone. We make our coffee, we serve our beer, and all we ask is that we’re left in peace to raise our families. To tend to our houses. To enjoy a night or two out on the road.

“But last night, we weren’t left alone.” Dutch’s eyes were black fire, his mustache bristling in genuine outrage. “Old enemies came where they weren’t wanted and tried to settle old scores. An O’Driscoll,” and Dutch gestured to Arthur, “came to Arthur’s house and set his barn on fire with one of his horses inside. With Arthur’s man sleepin’ in the house, a man you all have met, a fine man, an innocent man who ain’t had nothin’ to do with the old days.”

Outrage rippled through the barn behind Arthur, just as the embers of raw, dark fury stirred in Arthur’s chest. He met Dutch’s eyes, jaw set. 

“And while an O’Driscoll tried to set fire to Arthur’s home,” Dutch continued, seeing that Arthur wasn’t going to jump in, “another old enemy saw an opportunity and snatched John off the road, while John was just goin’ about his business-- _our_ business--and tryin’ to put bread on the table for his family.” 

Even more outrage swelled. It didn’t matter that John and Abigail were on the outs, that John had been staying with Hosea, that John still didn’t seem too sure whether or not Jack was his kid. Dutch’s words had their intended effect. 

“My friends, I am not a man of violence,” said Dutch, holding his hands out to quiet their outrage. 

_Lie,_ Arthur’s thoughts whispered. Dutch had always been a man of violence. He hadn’t been a man of _senseless_ violence, that was true. Dutch believed that violence, like any tool, should be properly applied. But he was plenty violent when it suited him. 

“I am not a man of war. We have a--have a _good_ life here, even if lately things have been a little tight. But I cannot--I _will not_ \--allow old enemies who have not yet learned to let the past lie come into _my_ house and hurt _my_ family. My sons,” Dutch said, nodding at Arthur, nodding at Abigail. 

“So what’re we gonna do about it?” Micah called, from where he’d sprawled out indolently in a chair, leg bouncing with anticipation. 

“We’re gonna go get John back,” said Dutch, to whoops and cheers from most of the boys. Abigail only shuddered, her face a mask of fear. Arthur’s heart twisted for her even as it was pulled by Dutch, Dutch leaning hard on old loyalty, old rhetoric, to try and stoke Arthur into a fighting rage again. 

“Sean here has been in Lemoyne lookin’ for our good ol’ friends the Lemoyne Raiders,” Dutch said, gesturing to Sean grandly. “Sean, why don’t you tell the rest of us what you told me?”

“Sure t’ing, boss,” Sean chirped, a mad gleam in his eyes, and he too stood up and hopped on top of the nearest table, though when Sean did it Arthur was reminded of a wolf cub leaping around trying to catch the attention of the head of the pack, oversized and ungainly, not Dutch’s stately, magnetic charisma. 

“Ladies an’ gents, the Lemoyne Raider’s ain’t got _shit all_ to their name,” Sean said. He spread his hands, grinning widely. “All _they’ve_ got is a worn down old house they’re passin’ off as a club house, down in the stinkin’ mud o’ the swamps.”

Beside Arthur, Hosea frowned.

“Six years ago, the Lemoyne Raiders had their clubhouse in Rhodes,” Hosea said, also standing. “They had the Scarlet Meadows County Sheriff’s Department in their pocket, and some boys from the Saint Denis roster as well.” 

“Their luck’s turned,” Sean said cheerfully. “I dunno what kinda numbers they had in the past, but I counted fifteen, twenty blokes at the clubhouse, and I checked Rhodes--their clubhouse’s a gun and ammo store now. There’s a new Sheriff in town. The old sheriff, Gray, he’s been put out. Was kicked out, sounded like. Drinkin’ on the job or somethin’, I guess. The new feller in charge’s got no love for the Raiders, nor anybody else, from what I hear.”

“He’s right about the clubhouse,” Arthur said. “I’ve been in Rhodes--there ain’t no clubhouse there, not anymore. ‘S hardly anythin’, ‘cept a bar an’ a few shops.” 

“Whatever pigs the Raiders had on their payroll six years ago, they’re on their own now,” Sean added, looking a bit put out that Arthur had jumped in. “And the new Chief of Police in San Denis is a black feller. _He’s_ not gonna stick his neck out for no Lemoyne Raider, not when half of ‘em spend their nights in white robes, from what I hear.”

Another hiss of fury and distaste went through the bar. This time Arthur added his own sound of displeasure, a deep rumble of disdain vibrating in his throat. 

“We’re not gonna leave John in the hands of such animals,” Dutch declared, nodding at Sean, who recognized his cue and hopped back down. “But we’re also not gonna go and start a war.

“I know some of you are afraid,” Dutch continued, looking around the room. He didn’t single anyone out, but Arthur felt the tension in the room swell anyway. “I know some of you have grown used to livin’ like we do, and don’t wanna jeopardize that. I want to assure you, personally, that I’m not lookin’ to get into a club war with the Lemoyne fuckin’ Raiders. I’m not lookin’ to get into it with the O’Driscolls either.

“But they came and they tried to hurt _our_ people,” Dutch said, passionately. “ _My_ sons, your brothers. None of us want to turn Valentine into a killing field. But we can’t let this go unpunished.” 

What seemed like the entire room chorused in agreement. 

Arthur couldn’t even fault Dutch’s logic. The Raiders had always been mindless, eager to cause trouble for trouble’s sake, but the Raiders wouldn’t chase Dutch and his people outside of their home turf. 

The O’Driscolls would, and if Dutch let the burning of Arthur’s barn go by without some kind of retaliation, the O’Driscolls would come in all their strength, whatever that looked like now fifteen years after Colm’d been sent to prison, to put Dutch and his people in the ground. If Hosea’s suspisions were right and some O’Driscolls had patched over to the Raiders, that complicated things; Raiders didn’t leave Lemoyne, but former O’Driscolls turned Raiders might. 

_God,_ Arthur said to himself. _We just wanted to serve some fuckin’ coffee. To keep the bar open. To run a few guns on the side, to make ends meet. We didn’t want this._

“We’re goin’ to get John tonight,” Dutch declared. “And we’ll deal with the O’Driscolls next, if there are any to be found. Arthur’s already taken care of the fool who thought he could set a fire and get away with it--” 

“Atta boy, Arthur!” Bill cheered. 

“--and I’ve got some ideas about how to go around sendin’ a message to the rest of them, if there are any left, and a message to anybody who might think like ‘em and want to try to pull one over on us all,” Dutch finished. He swept his fierce, impressive gaze over the rest of the room. 

“Arthur, Javier, Bill, Sean,” Dutch said. “You’re with me. We’re goin’ to Lemoyne. Micah, Lenny, Sadie, Kieran, and Mister Pearson, you’re gonna stay here with Hosea, or go home with one of the ladies, to keep an eye out for anybody you don’t like the look of, or anybody wearin’ Raider kuttes or O’Driscoll green.”

“Aye-aye,” said Arthur loudly, affecting enough dangerous laziness to keep anybody else from protesting. It worked on everybody but Micah. 

“Are you sure five men’s enough, Dutch?” Micah asked, tone wheedling. “The Raiders ain’t gonna want to let John go without a fight.” 

“Good thing we’re all a bit smarter’n you then, ain’t it?” Arthur called, craning his head around on Micah, letting fire shine in his eyes. Micah scowled but didn’t argue--he _was_ afraid of Arthur, and rightly so. 

Arthur was Dutch’s right hand. His best, fiercest fighter. Folks might’ve forgotten that now, with all the peace and quiet they’d enjoyed these last few years, but if Arthur had to remind everybody to keep Micah in line, he would. 

He turned back around and saw Dutch looking him up and down, expression unreadable. Arthur met his gaze steadily. 

“Any questions?” Dutch asked. Nobody said a word. Dutch heaved a sigh. “Alright, then,” he said. “Let’s get goin’, then. We’ve got one of my boys to rescue, and a busy night ahead of us.” 

\---

Lemoyne, as a state, was a mistake. It was a slice of Texas pilfered from Louisiana and was somehow the worst part of both, half hot, humid and dusty, thick with flies, and half a sucking swamp crawling with gators, fist-sized mosquitoes and racists. 

_I ain’t ever comin’ back here again,_ Arthur thought to himself as they crossed over from New Hanover, bikes whining 

Dutch and the crew he’d chosen to get John rumbled down to the state line in their bikes, tailpipes flashing, and then switched to a truck at Arthur’s insistence. 

“Bikes’re noticeable,” Arthur said, firmly. “An’ if any part of gettin’ John back goes south, the first people the police’ll look at are old club enemies.” 

Not even Bill had argued against that logic. They pulled off the road at a state nature preserve called Dewberry Creek, a tactical decision; no one would bat an eye at any vehicles left for a stretch of hours at a time in a nature preserve, and the Lemoyne Division of Natural Resources was so badly underfunded that they had about four park rangers to cover the whole state. Dewberry Creek was a tiny, dry plot of land, only interesting to birders in the spring and fall, and in the heat of early August it was utterly unremarkable and utterly deserted. 

“Fair point,” Dutch had allowed, and the five of them walked from Dewberry Creek to the first house they’d seen, a ramshackle little place about two miles from the nature preserve, and boosted a rusted, powder-blue 1978 Ford F-150 from the driveway. 

Arthur had been in charge of bringing the guns, and he’d chosen to go light on purpose. For himself he’d brought a long gun, his trusted old Sharps, despite how distinctive it was, and for the rest he’d brought an assortment of handguns and a sawed-off, all of the bullets filed flat to hide any serial numbers, wiped down with rubbing alcohol to remove any prints. 

Dutch drove, following Sean’s directions, while Arthur shared the truck bed with Bill and Javier sprawled across the back seat, all five of them doing their best to look like bored locals. 

They left the more tolerable, Texas-like half of Lemoyne behind soon enough, the sky shading towards evening as the road narrowed, roughened, and wound its way between towering cypresses and Florida maples, loblolly pines, black oaks draped heavy with silver-green Spanish moss. 

The edges of the bayous started to lap at the roads. White and blue birds startled into flight as the truck bounced and rattled over the pitted road, and in the dimming light Arthur caught the red-orange glitter of alligator eyes shining above the water. 

Arthur’s nerves twitched and jangled. 

_We’re exposed here,_ he thought. Even though they were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by moss and trees and cold-blooded animals, they were exposed. Dutch had never felt the need to roll down through a place like this, not for any length of time, and Arthur was off-balance. 

_This is for John,_ he told himself. _No other reason._

Bill didn’t say anything the entire ride, for which Arthur was grateful. Whatever conversation was going on in the cab was lost to the wind. Arthur was able to spend half an hour or so in more-or-less quiet, trying to pull himself together, to get ready. 

_It really has been a long time._

He’d raided other clubs before, of course. For a few years there Dutch had had boys going out almost every other night hitting places under the protection of other clubs; they had never messed with the Del Lobos or the cartels, but most others had been fair game. 

Arthur had hit rival clubhouses. He’d smashed up strip clubs. He’d raided crack houses, stuffing money in his pockets, and he’d taken his fair share of bats to other clubs’ bars. 

_This oughta be old hat,_ he thought to himself, but for some reason, his hands were shaking like it was his first time out. 

Arthur did his level best to hide it. It wouldn’t do to have Bill pick up on his nerves and start poking at Arthur, and it wouldn’t do for Arthur to lose his head, either, to start twitching and shaking and ceding sense to rage or fear. 

_Nobody else is gonna make sure Dutch plays this right,_ Arthur told himself sternly, trying to sink back into what had once been a familiar skin. Arthur had been Dutch’s master-at-arms, had helped plan every raid and had gone on more than half of them. Arthur should be used to the uneasy hours before a raid took off. He _had_ been, once upon a time, but for some reason whenever Arthur reached inside of himself, seeking that quiet, dark place that had always lived beneath his ribs, a well of ice that had spread through his chest and his hands and his feet and his mind, giving him calm, frozen clarity, Arthur only saw Charles’s face. 

He saw Charles in the kitchen and Charles in the barn; he saw Charles on horseback and Charles with his arm hanging out the window of his old Bonneville. He saw Charles in the shower and Charles in bed, and his heart filled with worry instead of icy calm. 

Try as he might--and he did try, because Arthur _knew_ it would be his responsibility tonight to make sure that this was resolved with as little bloodshed as possible, even without Micah around dripping poison in Dutch’s ear--Arthur couldn’t shake Charles, and he couldn’t shake his nerves either. 

By the time Dutch pulled the truck off the road beneath a great, moss-draped black oak, cutting the lights and the engine both, Arthur was dizzy with the effort of holding himself together. 

He felt like an unblooded boy. 

There was nothing to be done for it, though, because Arthur knew if they’d pulled off the road, they must be close. He’d just have to deal with it, and to push Charles’s face as far away as he could manage. 

_Easier said than done,_ he thought. Even though things were most likely finished between him and Charles now, Arthur’d let Charles get close, too close. He was stuck inside Arthur like a hook. 

“How close are we?” Bill asked, whisper-loud. 

Arthur rolled his eyes and got a good grip around his old Sharps, eyeing the encroaching swamp around them with some trepidation. 

“‘Bout half a mile,” Sean said. He gestured to the darkening, swampy wood. Arthur could just make out a chain-link fence, mostly given over to kudzu and wild grapevine, that ran from the edge of the road off into the trees. One side of it was water and the other was, Arthur hoped, dry land. 

_Or what passes for dry land down here,_ he thought sourly. 

“We’re on foot from here,” Dutch said, quiet and firm. “Guns out, but keep ‘em low, and for god’s sake keep the safeties on. We don’t wanna make a big fuss if we don’t have to.”

Arthur and the other boys nodded, and then by some unspoken agreement, Arthur took point, feeling out solid footing alongside the fence and leading the way into the darkening trees. 

He only slipped a few times, feet struggling for purchase. The ground up here _was_ solid, more or less, but the tree roots and the undergrowth were damp and slippery, the ground soft, and in the deepening dark Arthur could scarcely see his own hand in front of his face, let alone the ground underneath his feet. 

They all managed it well enough, though. Nobody fell and nobody got snakebit, at least not as far as Arthur could here, and they’d talked maybe twelve, thirteen hundred feet before a dark shape against the fence _moved_ , letting out a fearsome groan, and Arthur leaped straight back into Javier, scrambling for his gun, because he was pretty sure they were about to walk into a fucking alligator.

“ _Mierda_ ,” Javier swore, and shoved Arthur hard. “ _Pinche idiota,_ what are you doing?”

The shape against the fence moved again, and Arthur realized that whatever _it_ was, it wasn’t an alligator. 

“Hold on,” Arthur hissed. Just because it wasn’t an alligator didn’t mean that whatever it was was _safe_ \--all kinds of dangerous shit lived down here in the asscrack of the United States, including giant, man-eating wild pigs and sometimes even panthers. 

Why anybody lived down here voluntarily, Arthur would never understand. 

“Gimme a light,” he said, groping behind him. 

Javier grumbled a few more curses under his breath but did as Arthur asked, pressing a small metal flashlight into Arthur’s hand. Arthur clicked it on, hoping it was low enough to the ground that nobody looking through the woods would see it, and took a closer look at whatever was by the fence. 

It was a buck, Arthur realized, a big one, maybe fourteen or sixteen points, and it was very obviously almost dead. It wasn’t beside the fence, it was _in_ it, its great body caught and twisted up in the chain-links. The fence was wet with its blood, its neck and chest sodden and rusty, and Arthur could see where the fence had warped and twisted around it, bowed by the buck’s bulk. 

One of its front legs had made it through, but both of its hind legs kicked uselessly against the ground behind it and the other front leg was snarled in fence wire, twisted away from the deer’s body and black with flies. 

Dutch leaned around Javier, saw what Arthur was looking at and whistled lowly. “Poor bastard,” he said. 

“Holy shit, that’s a big one,” Javier added, looking the trapped animal up and down. “How’d it get stuck like that, d’you think?” 

“Probably smelled himself a doe over on this side, came through the fence tryin’ to get to her,” Dutch said, stepping up to the buck. The big bastard still had some fight left in it. As Dutch came near, it twisted its head, groaning as the fence cut in deeper, and tried to swipe at Dutch with its antlers. Its feet kicked feebly and its whole body shuddered with the effort.

Dutch _tsk_ ed sympathetically. “Poor bastard,” he said again, running a gentle hand over bloody fur. Arthur twitched, upset, and didn’t know why. “Shoulda stayed in the lands he knew. I’ll bet this fence wasn’t here five, six years ago.” 

“Should we cut it down?” Javier asked, frowning. None of the men here liked to see animals in pain, not even a mean old bastard like Bill. 

“Best thing’ll be to put it out of its misery,” Bill grunted. “Look at it. It ain’t gonna last long. I’d say it’s been here for a few days.”

Looking at the crowd of flies jostling in the buck’s many wounds, Arthur had to agree. His stomach twisted, but Bill was right. 

“Who’s got a knife?” Dutch asked. 

Arthur wordlessly turned his over, inching closer so he could drop the knife into Dutch’s hands. The buck tried to fight Arthur too, jerking its head again, those antlers stripped of their velvet and fighting-sharp, but its strength was fading fast. Dutch took the knife. 

“Sorry, feller,” he said, addressing the deer. Dutch grabbed it by the beam of its antlers, exposed its neck, and drove the knife in just beneath the animal’s jaw. 

The big buck shuddered, legs twitching, and when Dutch pulled the knife out of its neck the deer’s life followed with it. It kicked again and then fell still, sagging against the fence. The flies buzzed up when the animal thrashed, then fell back on its body and got back to their feasting. 

“A damn shame,” Dutch said.

Arthur watched the dead animal for a moment, not entirely sure why his whole body had recoiled, why he felt as if Dutch had stabbed him instead, a phantom pain aching just beneath his jaw. 

He saw Charles’s face in his memory again, eyes turned up in a smile, hair mussed with sleep. 

Then Arthur shook himself and forced his eyes away, following the fence down to the edge of the water. 

“We cain’t be far now,” he grunted, setting his jaw and trapped all the tight, twisting feelings seething in his belly behind it. “C’mon, we’re losin’ daylight. ‘S gonna be full dark here soon.” 

Dutch gave Arthur’s knife back and followed, the other three pressed in behind, and Arthur led the way along the fence to a dense copse of cypress trees, beside which was a low stone wall, overgrown with moss and weeds, and a gravel road cutting into the treeline. 

Arthur crouched behind the wall and unslung his Sharps from his back, propping it up on the crumbling stones to take a good look through the scope at whatever lay beyond. 

“Well?” Dutch asked, impatient. “What do you see, Arthur?”

“There’s a house back there, alright,” Arthur murmured, looking closely.

The house the Lemoyne Raiders were using as a clubhouse was a faded, half-rotted old thing, three storeys tall and half-sunk into the swamp surrounding it. It must have been a plantation house back in the day, though Arthur couldn’t imagine what grew in a fetid place like this. 

The yard was littered with debris, broken couches and overturned armchairs, rusted cars sitting up on cinderblocks, lawn chairs and beer bottles and what looked like an old copper moonshine still. Up the gravel drive in front of the house, six or seven bikes were arrayed around the porch, in various sizes, styles and states of repair. 

The nicest bike was a vintage Harley Low Rider, polished black and gleaming. The most run-down was a ‘76 Sportster missing most of its hardware, listing to the side like a scuppered ship. The yard was lit up by the house and a few bare, harsh bulbs out on the porch. 

“How many bikes do you count?” Dutch hissed in Arthur’s ear, his bulk arranged behind Arthur to hide them from any prying eyes. 

Arthur adjusted his scope and looked again. “Six up by the house,” Arthur reported, tallying up the bikes he could see. “An’ two by that shed over there, on the water.” 

He studied the shed through the scope, curious and calculating. The shed was just as run down as the house, little more than bare, untreated timber left to stand against the wind and the rain. Arthur spotted just one man outside the shed, a feller in a battered grey jacket with a black kutte thrown over his shoulders, leaning against the side of the shed looking out over the water with his hat pulled low over his eyes. 

“John’s in the shed,” Arthur murmured, studying the Raider. As he watched the feller scratched his nose, shook himself like he was trying to get rid of a fly or a daze, and walked around the shed’s deck and out of sight before reappearing on the other side, where he leaned against the side of it again, this time staring out across the yard. 

“You sure?” Dutch murmured back. 

“Pretty damn,” said Arthur, handing his rifle over so Dutch could look through it. 

Dutch did a full sweep through the scope, lingering on the old manor house’s porch and on the shed just as Arthur had. 

“I think you’re right,” said Dutch, handing the rifle back over. “That’s what I’d do, anyway. Keepin’ a hostage in the house is too risky.”

Arthur agreed. Dutch had never been interested in kidnapping or the ransom game so Arthur had never had to worry about good places to stuff a hostage, but he figured the principal was the same for most kinds of contraband. 

They kept all the guns they moved in Lost Country instead of Dutch’s house or Hosea’s place for the same reason the Raiders put John in the shed. The cops would smash up Dutch’s place first, then go for the bar after. If any staties or county deputies wanted to take a crack at the Raiders, Arthur imagined that they’d swarm the old plantation house before they’d think to poke around outside of it. 

“So what’s the plan, boss?” Sean asked, nearly bouncing with excitement. “That house’s old as fuck, but I reckon it’ll burn just fine with the right encouragement.”

“Oh, we can encourage it alright,” Bill said, cracking his knuckles.

“We are _not_ burnin’ the house down,” Arthur hissed. 

“Aw, c’mon,” Sean wheedled. “It’d send a right loud message, wouldn’t it?”

“And draw the eye of every person in a ten mile radius,” Javier muttered. He pointed out back the swamp across the hazy water, where a faint orange glow stood against the evening darkness. “See that, MacGuire? That’s Saint Denis. And if we can see them…”

“We’re not gonna make a big scene or a big fuss,” Dutch said, ending the argument. Arthur let out a near-silent breath of relief. “Our priority’s gettin’ John out. We’re not here for revenge.”

“Unless they’ve killed him,” Bill muttered, but Dutch quelled him with a look. 

“If they’d killed John, I can’t see why they’d have a man standing guard outside,” Dutch said, reasonable as ever. “There’s gators in that water--if they’d killed him they’d have tossed him already.”

“But what if they’re trying to, I dunno, send a message or somethin’?”

“Bill,” Arthur snapped. “Shut _up._ ”

Now it was Arthur’s turn to be on the receiving end of Dutch’s glare, but Arthur, unlike Bill, wasn’t so easily quieted. He glared right back, mouth set. 

“We hit the shed first,” said Dutch, apparently deciding that an argument wasn’t worth it. “Take out the feller keepin’ watch and anybody inside. If John’s in there, we grab him and go. If he ain’t… well, if he ain’t, we’ll revisit your plan, Sean. Alright?”

“Alright,” Arthur and the others chorused, though Arthur still had no intention of letting Sean and Bill get out of hand. 

“Alright then,” said Dutch. “We’re gonna have to go in from the water. Arthur, Bill, Sean, you head on over-- _quietly_ \--and see if you can’t find us a path or somethin’ to get us up to the back of the shed.”

“Didn’t you just say there was gators in the water?” Bill asked, dubious. 

Arthur shoved him. “Jus’ don’t be the slowest, Bill, an’ you’ll be fine.” 

“Javier and I will keep watch, make sure nobody from the big house comes over with any nasty surprises,” said Dutch. “Go on. When it’s full dark, we’ll smash in and grab John.” 

Arthur nodded and herded the other two around the broad trunk of a towering cypress tree and into the watery woods. Mud sucked at their feet and clung to their shins. Arthur didn’t see any gators, though, just frogs and toads and one big ugly snapping turtle, so he counted his blessings and considered himself lucky enough, even as mosquitoes started to flock around him and dive for unprotected skin. 

“Quiet, now,” Arthur warned Sean and Bill, as they came through the trees to the edge of the little lagoon that sat behind the shed. They both nodded, joking set aside as the narrow-eyed focus of running a job took over, and all three of them took cover behind the trees, watching the shed’s guard as he made another slow circuit around the building. 

Arthur didn’t see any clear path, not one that would give them cover from the Raider’s line of sight, and he cursed softly. 

“How deep d’you think that water is, Bill?” Arthur asked. 

Bill squinted. “Dunno, maybe two, three feet? Most’a these swamps ain’t deep. ‘S not how they’re made. They’re more shallow’n spread out than deep. It’s probably an awful, muddy mess, though.” 

Arthur sighed. Of course it was. 

“Here’s what I’m gonna do,” he whispered. “I’m gonna get down low as I can and go across the lagoon, get under the deck on the edge there.” He pointed to where the deck met water; there was a space beneath it maybe a foot or so high, keeping the shed raised up above the water level a bit to give it some breathing room in a flood. 

“When you see that Raider walk overhead, Sean, do that whistle thing you do. I’ll come up outta the water an’ grab him ‘fore he can get back in sight of the house.” 

“Hawk or owl?” Sean asked. He always had taken his guerrilla bullshit seriously. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Hawk, I guess,” he said. “Nice an’ loud, got it?”

Sean nodded.

“What do you want me to do?” Bill asked. 

“I dunno, come runnin’ if it looks like I’m losin’?” Arthur muttered. He shook his head. “You stay back here for now. Help Dutch an’ Javier get over to me when they come, an’ keep the way out clear for us, okay?”

“Sure,” said Bill, though he was obviously put out that he wouldn’t be in the fray himself. “Just yell if you need savin’, Arthur.”

Arthur slung his rifle around his back and crouched at the edge of the treeline, waiting for the Raider to come back on his rounds. The Raider did after a minute or so, plodding along, his bulk making the deckboards groan, and when he was around the shed and out of sight again, Arthur took a fortifying breath and waded out into the lagoon, praying that his dumb ass wouldn’t step on the back of an alligator. 

The water was tepid and thick with algae, but it wasn’t deep. If he’d been standing up at his full height Arthur’d probably only be in water up to his hips, but crouched as he was the water lapped at his chest and his chin, splashed against his beard and his nose and his ears. 

_Tastes like ass,_ Arthur thought, disgusted--he usually liked water fine, and didn’t mind swimming or splashing around--but he didn’t see any red-orange eyes in the lagoon or step on any tails or backs, so it could’ve been worse. 

He made it to the edge of the deck and under it in maybe thirty seconds, moving as fast as he dared. Water still sloshed as he got himself settled, but with any luck if the Raider overhead had heart Arthur moving, he’d look out at the still lagoon and think a bird had taken off or something. 

Arthur maneuvered himself to the edge of the deck, keeping his hands out of sight. Along the edge of the lagoon he caught a flash of movement, a white shirt, a broad hat brim. Javier and Dutch were moving into position.

Above Arthur, the deck boards creaked. 

The shrill, piercing cry of a hunting hawk split the air, and Arthur moved. He heaved himself up and out of the water, over the edge of the deck, and had his hands wrapped around the Lemoyne Raider’s throat before the Raider could even think to yell. 

The man still struggled, of course. Arthur’s hands were big and strong, his grip not easily broken, but the man tried to get loose anyway, fought even as Arthur dragged him behind the shed, out of sight from the house, and dug his thumbs into the thick veins on either side of the man’s windpipe, choking the air from his brain. 

The Raider’s face went red, then purple, then steadily blue, his eyes bulging, his lips whitening to thin lines. His struggles weakened. Arthur didn’t let him go until he was sure the man had dropped off into unconsciousness, going limp and slack in Arthur’s hands. 

_It’d be easy to snap his neck,_ Arthur thought, lowering the man to the deck boards. His pulse fluttered against Arthur’s fingertips. _Real easy._

He didn’t kill the man. There was no need for it, not when he was unconscious and soon to be tied up, unable to call for help or get in Arthur’s way. Charles’s face still hovered there around the edge of Arthur’s memory, and while Charles did have a temper on him, Arthur knew Charles would disapprove of needless killing. 

Satisfied that the Raider would no longer be a threat, Arthur whistled back across the water, a songbird’s three-note tune, and set about tying up the unconscious Raider while the other four sloshed across the lagoon and clamored up onto the deck with Arthur. 

“Neatly done,” Dutch remarked, as Arthur fished a square red bandana out of the Raider’s pocket and stuffed it in his mouth. Bill offered Arthur some rope, which he used to tie the Raider’s hands and feet, and Javier helpfully produced another bandana, which Arthur used to tie across the Raider’s mouth to keep the first from being spit out. 

“We can’t get in this way, boys,” Sean said, testing a door at the back of the shed. “It’s blocked or somethin’.” 

“We’ll go in the front, then,” Dutch said, unbothered. “We’ll just have to go one by one, and quietly, so nobody from the house sees us.” 

“Hold on,” Arthur said, looking the unconscious Raider up and down. “This feller’s near your size, Javier. How you feel ‘bout playin’ dress up?” 

“Better than you do, usually,” Javier said, smirking a little, already shucking off his own leather jacket. 

Arthur untied the Raider, stripped him down to his wife beater and boxers, and tied him up again after handing off all his clothes to Javier. 

“Well, you don’t look a damn thing like him, but from a distance you oughta fool anybody lookin’,” Dutch said, clapping Javier on the back. “Good idea, Arthur. Javier, you go in first. If there’s trouble, knock somethin’ over or somethin’. If John’s in there we’ll come after you, alright?”

“Fine by me,” Javier said. “You boys stay out of sight. I’ll be quick.”

Javier went around the front of the shed, pulling the Raider’s hat low over his eyes, and the rest of them pressed themselves against the shed’s back wall, listening intently. 

Javier, never short on courage, knocked on the shed’s front door.

Dutch whistled lowly again, what little of his expression Arthur could see in the dim light impressed. “He’s always had some stones, our Javier,” he murmured. 

Arthur couldn’t disagree, but he was too busy listening hard to respond; Javier’s knock echoed, muffled, and from inside the shed they all heard a voice say, “Custer? That you, man?” 

“That ain’t John,” Arthur muttered. 

Javier apparently had come to the same conclusion, because he knocked again, loud and insistent. 

Whoever was inside the shed said something low and indistinct. There was a heavy _thud,_ unmistakable as the sound of a fist hitting flesh, and then the voice said, louder, “Gimme a minute, will you, Cus? I’m ‘bout done here.” 

There was another fleshy _thud,_ followed by a groan. 

“Now _that’s_ John,” Arthur murmured. He’d walloped John enough over the years to know what he sounded like when he was getting the shit kicked out of him. 

“A groan’s good,” Dutch said, more optimistically than Arthur felt was warranted. “If he’s groanin’, he’s alive.” 

Sounds of movement came from inside the shed, feet creaking across the old boards, a doorknob rattling, the hiss of rusty old hinges, and then the voice said, “Wait a second, you ain’t--!” 

The shed door slammed, and a string of muffled sounds bled through the warped, gap-toothed walls; a grunt, another fleshy _thump,_ a choking rattle, and then several seconds of silence, followed by a heavy scrape, and then the back door was forced open, Javier grinning on the other side. 

“Gentlemen,” he said brightly. There was blood splashed across his cheek, but when Arthur peered into the shed the Raider, a big ugly bastard with stringy long hair and an impressive knot growing out of the side of his head, stirred feebly. He was alive, but Javier had hit him hard enough to daze him and Arthur doubted that he’d be getting up any time soon. 

Javier had shoved some dilapidated old shelves out of the way to get the back door open and Arthur crowded in, followed by Dutch, Bill and Sean. 

The shed was small and grim. There were a few shelves on the wall, a collection of rusted tools dumped into the corner and a mess of cobwebs clinging to the ceiling, but not much else. 

John sat slumped over in a chair in the middle of the shed, tied down hand and foot, and though he was conscious, one eye flickering, he clearly wasn’t aware of what was going on around him. 

He’d been put through the wringer. The whole left side of John’s face was mottled black and blue, jaw swollen, one eye forced closed. Dried blood ran down his nose and his chin, and Arthur could see that all of the fingers on John’s right hand were set at unnatural angles. 

Black fury chewed at Arthur’s chest. 

He crossed the shed in two strides and dropped to his knees, lifting John’s head up as gently as he could. 

John’s eye flickered again, but he didn’t say anything, didn’t smile, only let out a thin groan of pain when Arthur’s touch jostled his injuries. 

“John,” Arthur said, quietly. He pressed his fingers to John’s neck and found that his pulse was strong enough, jarring against Arthur’s fingertips, but John’s skin was cold and clammy. _Shock,_ Arthur thought, grim. “Johnny, it’s me. You in there?” 

John didn’t respond. His head lolled against Arthur’s hand and his breath came out in a pained wheeze. The poor fool probably had a couple of cracked ribs to go alone with his cracked face, though Arthur hoped a few cracked ribs were the worst of it. 

“I gotcha, boy,” Arthur said. He brought his knife out again and cut the ropes holding John to the chair with a flick of his wrist. As soon as he was free John slumped forward in the chair, unable to hold himself up, nearly falling on top of Arthur, and Arthur had to catch him with a quick, muffled curse. 

“He alright?” Dutch asked, worriedly. 

Arthur bared his teeth. The time for worry was long past. If Dutch hadn’t wanted anybody to get hurt, he shouldn’t have started running guns through Lemoyne Raider territory. “No, he ain’t alright,” Arthur said. “But he ain’t dead, not yet, at least.”

“Aw, he ain’t gonna die,” said Javier, straightening up from his own work. He’d bound and gagged the second Raider to keep the man from calling out for help. “We’ve got him now. It’s not far back to the truck.”

“Don’t jinx it, Escuella,” Bill began, but Dutch cut off all their squabbling with a sharp gesture, hand slashing down through the air. 

“Can he walk?” Dutch asked, looking at Arthur. 

John stirred at Dutch’s voice, trained through many long years of practice like Arthur was to answer Dutch through anything, a broken jaw or a hangover or a mouthful of beer, but Arthur doubted that he had any control of his movements right now--he sure as hell didn’t have any awareness of what was going on around him.

“Prob’ly not,” said Arthur. “I can carry him, though. We gotta move, Dutch. That door slammin’ was loud. We ain’t got much--”

Before he could say _time,_ a voice rang out from somewhere behind them, distant but growing closer. 

“Hey, Custer!” someone called. The voice was coming from the big house, if Arthur had it right. “Custer, was that you bangin’ around out there? What’s goin’ on, man?” 

“Shit,” said Bill. 

“We gotta go, now,” Dutch said, taking control again. “Arthur, can you carry him?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Arthur said. He levered himself back to his feet, tipping John over his shoulder as he went. John hung across Arthur’s back like a sack of rocks, but he wasn’t too heavy. He was a bit too skinny, actually, now that Arthur could feel John’s ribs digging into his shoulder. 

His barb from the night of the cookout came back to his ears. _Ain’t Abigail ever feed you?_

Maybe money had been tighter for John that Arthur’d thought. 

Securing his grip on John, Arthur made for the back door. Out by the house the voice called out again. 

“Custer! You dead, man, or d’you just have that white trash piece’a shit in their suckin’ your dick?”

“It’s a half mile back to the truck,” Dutch said, low and urgent. “We’re gonna have to go through the trees. Bill, Sean, block that door.”

Bill and Sean scrambled to do as they were told. 

“Javier, you lead the way,” Dutch commanded. “Arthur, you go after. I’ll cover you and John, okay?” 

“Fine,” Arthur grunted, shifting his grip on John to be sure the fool wouldn’t slip out of Arthur’s hold or drown in the lagoon while they were running. 

“Bill, Sean, make some noise,” Dutch said. “Try and confuse ‘em. Everybody meet back at the truck in,” Dutch checked his watch, “ten minutes, okay? Give ‘em hell.” 

“On it, boss,” Sean said, grinning widely, and that was the last Arthur saw of the shed where the Lemoyne Raiders had kept John. He went out the back after Javier, who shed his stolen jacket and pulled his own back on, Dutch’s sign bright and clean against the cracked, faded leather. 

“This way, Arthur,” Javier said. He jumped down into the lagoon and waited for Arthur to follow. Arthur did, grimacing, kicking up a tremendous splash of stinking swamp water, and they set off at a run, or as much a run as they could work up while waist-deep in muck. Arthur heard another splash, and Dutch shouted, “Don’t die, boys!”

“Hey!” a Raider cried. “Somethin’s wrong, I cain’t get this door open--Custer! Custer!” 

“It’s Van der Linde!” another Raider bellowed. “They’re in the water! They’re makin’ a run for it!” 

The night shattered into violence. Arthur wasn’t sure who shot first, but somebody did; a shotgun barked, splintering wood, and the water all around Arthur came alive with bullets. 

Arthur didn’t dare slow down to look behind him. Dutch shouted and a pistol _cracked,_ a yell sounding back by the lagoon’s edge to tell Arthur that Dutch had hit his mark. 

A slug hit the water ahead of Arthur and soaked him. Another exploded into a tree trunk a few feet from Arthur’s head. Dutch’s pistol _cracked_ again, then a third time, punctuated by a shotgun blast and the low, steady _pop_ of a repeater. 

John flopped against Arthur’s back, limp and still. Arthur’s heart was in his throat, a red haze falling over his eyes. 

He wanted to turn around. He wanted to stand his ground. He wanted to _fight_ \--

A shotgun roared again, a slug slamming into Arthur’s shoulder, and he went down into the water with a cry of pain. Swamp water and algae filled his mouth. Pain lit up the space behind his eyes with white-hot fire. John slipped out of his grip. 

Arthur panicked. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t stand; there was water all around him, black and choking, and he flailed, trying to claw his way towards air. 

A hand caught Arthur by the back of the neck and drew him up. Arthur sucked in a greedy breath, still half-blind, and reached for Dutch. 

He found a Lemoyne Raider. 

The man’s grip on the back of Arthur’s neck was bruising. He was maybe Arthur’s age, sunburnt and mean, and his lips twisted into a snarl when he realized who he’d pulled out of the swamp. Arthur had come in his kutte and all his rockers were stitched across his chest. The Raider’s eyes widened. He knew exactly who he’d caught. 

Arthur tried to kick, but his legs wouldn’t work right. His entire right arm was paralyzed with agony. 

“I got one!” the Raider hollered. A spotlight sheared through the darkness and lit Arthur and the Raider up like a marquee sign. Arthur saw the gun in the Raider’s other hand, black metal gleaming. “Hoo-ee, boy, are we gonna have some fun with _you._ ” He brought the gun up, grinning meanly, and then his head snapped back in a cloud of red mist and Arthur fell from his grip, water closing over again. 

This time it _was_ Dutch who pulled Arthur up, one hand tight in Arthur’s soaked shirt, the other wrapped around his pistol. The Raider who’d grabbed Arthur was dead, floating in the swamp with half his face blown away. 

Arthur stared, confused. He didn’t understand what was happening. 

“Arthur,” Dutch was saying, his voice strangely warped, tinny, like he was speaking to Arthur from a thousand miles away. “Arthur, son, you’ve been shot.”

“John,” Arthur rasped, trying to get a hold of his pain, to bottle it up and shove it aside. But it ran through him like a herd of wild horses, dragging Arthur along behind it. He couldn’t get a handle on it. The water around him was clouding red. “Where’s John, I had him--”

“Shit,” Dutch said, “hold on, just stay with me, son,” and he let Arthur go. 

Arthur splashed down into the water, dazed, and nearly fell again. He propped himself up on a tree, lightning flashing behind his eyes, and tried to breathe. His ears felt like they’d been stuffed full of cotton. His mouth hurt, and blood ran down his arm. 

“Shit, I got him, here he is,” Dutch said, returning to Arthur’s field of vision with John slung across his back. Arthur couldn’t tell if John was alive or dead and his hert leapt into this throat, raw with panic. 

The last time they’d spoken, Arthur and John had fought. If John had died--if Arthur’d failed to save him--

“Arthur, c’mon,” Dutch snapped, voice pitched to speak to that instinctive place inside of Arthur that ran through his spine like a cord of steel, that responded to Dutch through hell or high water and jumped to attention when Dutch spoke. “I can’t carry both of you, you’ve gotta come on, Arthur--”

Obeying Dutch was second habit, so Arthur lurched himself upright and did as he was told, sloshing through the swamp after Dutch, his right arm hanging useless by his side. 

Several other things passed Arthur’s awareness in flashes. Sean lurching through the muck, pistol flashing in his hands. Bill bellowing like a wounded bear. Javier shouting, waving his hands, trying to draw attention to himself. Orange alligator eyes shining in the water. Tree trunks exploding, bark splintering off into the air. John laying pale across Dutch’s back.

“Dutch,” Arthur rasped. He stopped moving and looked up at his father. Clarity returned in fragments. They weren’t going to make it, not like this. Not like this. “Dutch, wait.” 

“Arthur, we don’t have _time,”_ Dutch began, half-turning, but then he caught sight of the expression on Arthur’s face and went dead white. 

“Dutch,” Arthur repeated, and forced himself to swallow and stand up straight, forced himself to look past the white-hot pain in his shoulder, the taste of blood in his mouth. “Dutch, we ain’t gonna get out of here, not like this.” 

“We’re almost there, Arthur,” Dutch urged. “C’mon, son, _move._ ” 

Arthur swayed on his feet. John was so pale across Dutch’s back, almost unnaturally still, and a bullet struck a cypress tree a few inches to the left of Dutch’s head. Dutch flinched. Shrapnel had drawn a line of blood across his face. 

_Dutch never flinches,_ Arthur thought to himself, then nodded, mind made up. 

“You get him outta here,” Arthur said, drawing strength from his conviction. “You get him outta here, okay? I’ll see you back at the shop.” 

“ _Arthur,”_ Dutch barked, a wild look in his eyes, but Arthur ignored it and took the Sharps off his back. 

He didn’t bother looking through the scope. Arthur doubted that he’d be able to, really, not like this. He was seeing double, seeing triple, and the haze of agony hadn’t receded any despite the grim, cold clarity that was spreading through Arthur’s chest, finally cracking free. 

Charles’s face was gone. Ice slowly filtered through Arthur’s chest, down his arms, into his fingertips. He knew what he had to do. 

“ _Go,_ Dutch!” Arthur said, and fired a round off into the darkness. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll be along. _Go._ ” 

It was a slow gun, Arthur’s old Sharps, but it was _loud._ Whatever Dutch said next was lost to it as the gun boomed. Arthur lurched to the right, putting space between himself and Dutch, and reloaded. He fired again, getting farther away, and reloaded, fired again, reloaded. 

Arthur stumbled deeper and deeper into the darkness of the swamp, using the thick trees and hanging curtains of moss as cover. He kept firing off blindly into the dark, not caring if he hit anything, counting on the noise to lure the Raiders in his direction, and shouted. 

“Hey, you bastards!” Arthur roared, not even caring that his voice had cracked in half with pain. “Hey, you sons’a bitches!” 

He splashed, kicked the water, fired again, made an almighty racket, and then when he heard the yells and shouts behind him, turned tail and ran. 

The swamp was so godawful dark that Arthur nearly killed himself half a dozen times smacking into trees and branches, tearing his hands on tree bark, his face on reaching thorns. Mud pulled at his feet and sapped his strength. His shoulder was on fire. 

But Arthur blundered through the dark anyway, making enough noise that he knew he’d be followed. Shots rang out behind him, splashed into the water and thudded into the trees, and Arthur heard bodies in the swamps too, heard yelling, cursing and threats. Arthur ran until the shouts and yells and gunshots of the Raiders faded away and were lost in the dark water behind him. 

After that he fired off another couple of shots again, to make sure the Raiders stayed on his tail, and found himself out of ammunition, out of strength. He tossed his faithful old Sharps into the water and pressed on. 

The sounds of pursuit kept up for a while--a few minutes, in all reality, but to Arthur it felt like hours, and then those too faded away as the Raiders lost him in the dark, either too unwilling to chase him deeper into the bayou or too unsure of where he’d gone. 

_They got away,_ Arthur told himself, thinking of Dutch and John and Javier and Bill and Sean. He hadn’t heard the Raiders celebrating, hadn’t heard any of his friends screaming in pain. _They got away. They had to get away._

Somehow, Arthur kept himself moving. The swamp began to thin out. The water got shallower, lapping at Arthur’s thighs, then his knees, then his ankles. The trees stopped pressing in so close. A dirt track appeared, the solidity of it almost a shock after all the swamp muck and mire, and Arthur took one step on it, nearly weeping, then two, then fell to his knees, utterly exhausted, the last of his strength spent drawing the Lemoyne Raiders away from Dutch and John. 

Arthur swayed. Pain raged behind his eyelids, chewed at his lungs, at the knots of his spine. He couldn’t feel his right arm below the elbow, but he could smell the blood. 

_Well, shit,_ Arthur thought, collapsing down onto his left elbow. _This ain’t how I thought it’d end. I thought there’d be… more oncoming traffic. More headlights._

As if on cue, a beam of light slashed through the darkness pressing down on Arthur from all sides, lighting up the dirt road and the swamp around it, the blood running down Arthur’s arm and the mud stuck to his knees. 

Arthur nearly smiled. _The light at the end of the tunnel,_ he thought. Strange. He’d thought that that was just bullshit. 

“Hey, mister!” someone called, the beam of light coming closer. “Hey, mister, you okay?” 

But Arthur didn’t hear it. Arthur was already gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relax, y'all, he's not dead. Arthur dying in-game upset me badly enough that I went out and adopted a dog & I'm now at my two-dog limit for the house I rent, so I can't kill him off in this either. 
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: 
> 
> Canon-typical violence, fairly graphic description of animal injury & death, fairly graphic description of injury & harm to human beings. The most explicit references so far to Arthur's childhood; direct mentions of child abuse & indirect mentions of the psychological harm stemming from such. Arthur struggles with self-worth and has internalized a lot of guilt that canonically expresses itself as a rather fatalistic outlook on life; as early as Chapter II in-game.
> 
> I think a lot about this exchange between Arthur and John: 
> 
> Arthur: _This life, this way? Well, we're the last, I reckon._  
>  John: _That's the way it goes, I guess._  
>  Arthur: _For me, yes._


	10. new world: iii

Arthur only bothered waking up at all because there was something hard and sharp digging directly into his ribcage, and it was annoying enough that after what felt like an eternity in the dark, he finally consented to open his eyes and tried to shove the offending object away. 

Opening his eyes was a mistake. 

Arthur groaned in pain, light spiking through his head, and flung an arm over his eyes. He tried to curl away from both the sun and whatever was digging into his ribs. He didn’t have much room to move; he curled to the side and found his face mashed up against something warm and musky, fine hairs tickling Arthur’s nose. 

He groaned again, slitting one eye open, trying to wade through confusion and pain. 

A very large brown eye peered back at him. 

“ _ Jesus _ ,” Arthur hissed, lurching back the way he’d come, even as the motion jarred him back into the hard, sharp thing--a hoof, Arthur realized--that had woken him. 

Moving made Arthur’s shoulder flash a line of white fire up his neck and into the base of his skull and the memory of Lemoyne came flooding back, filling his mouth with the taste of blood and stagnant water. 

Arthur coughed, pain making his lungs heavy, and forced himself to lay still for long enough that the fire faded, giving him a little breathing room, a little space to think. 

A series of events played behind his eyes like a video tape watched too many times, skipping and fraying. The Lemoyne Raiders’ clubhouse slowly sinking into its swamp, yard littered with trash, floodlights harsh and yellow. The shed they’d stuffed poor John into like something out of a B-grade horror movie, all rusty tools and cobwebs. John heavy across Arthur’s back, swamp water sucking at his knees. 

Arthur remembered fits and starts. Getting shot had kicked like a horse. There’d been blood in the water. He remembered hot metal under his hands, the Sharps, the flash of its muzzle, the sound it had made as Arthur had tossed it aside and it had sunk beneath the bayou. 

He remembered shouting too, remembered Dutch’s stricken face, a line of blood drawn underneath one dark eye. There’d been more shouting after that, Arthur himself roaring insults, the Raiders shrieking and screaming like enraged animals as they’d tried to find him in the darkness. 

Arthur remembered seeing lights through the trees. Hands, too, hands pressing on his wounds while he’d bled in the dirt. He remembered hands lifting him, hands braced behind his neck and his knees, and he thought--he  _ thought _ \--that he remembered the swaying of a car on the highway, and fingers carding through his hair. 

_ I ain’t dead,  _ Arthur realized.  _ At least, I ain’t sure.  _ Given how badly his shoulder hurt, the pain sparkling in front of his eyes every time he drew a shortened, tense breath, Arthur was pretty sure that he was alive. The light he’d seen in the woods hadn’t been the glow of heaven or the fires of hell after all. It had been a flashlight cutting through the darkness. 

_ I don’t understand. _

The strange horse whickered softly and nosed his face, lipping over his hair. Arthur let it. He had no idea where he was. The horse nipping at him wasn’t one of his own and the--shed? Lean-to? Arthur couldn’t see very much of it, but he didn’t think he was lying in a barn--place he was huddled in wasn’t a place he recognized. 

Arthur lay there panting for a minute, overwhelmed, and then forced himself to take stock of where he was, of what had happened. The dark shirt and pants he’d been wearing in Lemoyne were gone, as was his kutte, replaced by loose-fitting sweatpants and a faded blue-and-grey checkered flannel. Arthur’s undershirt was gone too, his chest and stomach left bare, and thick bandages had been wrapped around his shoulder and his upper chest. 

He tried to move his right hand and had to shove his left into his mouth to stop from howling. He  _ could  _ move his fingers, his wrist, his elbow, but trying to do so made a red agony throb in his shoulder, pain driving like a railroad spike into his chest and his arm and the back of his head. 

He had to take a few minutes to breathe, ragged, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. When he’d gotten himself back under control, he kept his right arm as still as he could and Arthur let go of his left hand, ignoring the teeth marks that he’d dug into his knuckles, and felt for the edges of his wound. 

Whoever’d brought him here, wherever  _ here  _ was, had done a good job treating the gunshot. Shotgun wounds  _ sucked.  _ Arthur had been shot before, once a graze along his ribs and once into the meat of his thigh, but this was worse than either of those wounds had been. 

Arthur could feel the hot, angry edges of the hole in his shoulder, his heart throbbing in time with the pain that rose and fell whenever Arthur prodded at it, but the wound had been packed with something, an astringent paste sticking to Arthur’s fingertips, and his whole shoulder was wrapped tightly in bandages, pressed snug against Arthur’s chest to discourage him from moving it too much. 

_ ‘S professional work,  _ Arthur thought, once he’d managed to get a hold of his pain and spool his thoughts back together. The wound was hot to the touch, but it didn’t stink and Arthur couldn’t feel any fever in it, any claminess crawling up his neck or down through his right hand. 

The fact that Arthur was awake in some lean-to stall somewhere and not dead in the swamp meant that he probably wasn’t going to die, as long as the wound didn’t get too infected before Arthur could have Hosea take a look at it. 

The unfamiliar horse lipped Arthur’s forehead and snorted directly into his face. 

“Gerroff,” Arthur grumbled, using his good hand to push the horse’s nose away, struggling to prop himself up on his ass without jarring his bad shoulder. He mostly managed it after a tense few seconds, got himself hunched upright against the horse’s barrel, panting with the effort. 

The horse, undeterred, put its big head in Arthur’s lap like a loyal hound and swished its tail to scare off any flies. With its head across his legs and pain still tap-dancing up and down his spine, Arthur was well and truly stuck. 

Arthur sighed and conceded, scratching the horse’s forelock with the hand that worked. The horse was wrapped around him like a puppy but it seemed to mean well and Arthur was using it to keep himself upright, so he figured that giving it a good scratch was the least he could do. 

“Who’re you then, horse?” Arthur asked, voice cracked and rusty. His mouth tasted like Arthur had licked a pier. 

The horse--more a pony, really, the animal couldn’t be any taller at the shoulder than Rooster or Lyra--only swished its tail again. The parts of it that Arthur could see were a splotchy, silvery roan, grey and white patches mixed with lighter roaning hairs, its face white and the skin around its mouth and nose a fine, delicate pink. Its mane and tail were mostly grey and it was a sturdy, well-built horse, put together more like a mustang than a fine-boned Arabian. 

It didn’t seem to mind playing nursemaid, either. Arthur scratched its forelock, then its ears, then its cheeks, and the horse just breathed with him, barrel rising and falling against Arthur’s back, rear hooves digging into his thighs, and swished its tail now and again to keep the flies back. 

Arthur drowsed like that for a while, too tired and too hurt to consider lurching to his feet and trying to make a run for it. 

“Ah,” said a familiar, much-loved voice, “you’re awake. How are you feeling?” 

Arthur tilted his head back against the horse to get a better look at Charles, heart in his throat, and said, “‘M alive, anyway. Cain’t ask for more’n that, I reckon.” 

Charles snorted. He stayed back, leaning against the edge of the lean-to. Behind him was a big, flat field, the grass turned yellow with summer heat, and a big, flat sky. Arthur could see a few other horses grazing in a low pasture, a tiny white farmhouse set back against the edge of the field and a long, crooked fence running off into the horizon as far as Arthur could see. 

Charles looked like shit. His hair was loose and untidy, braids undone, dark strands sticking to his forehead. His clothes were clean but loose and those deep-pressed bruises were back underneath his eyes, his skin ashen underneath its color. 

“How’s the shoulder?” Charles asked. It was hard to pick apart his tone, flat as it was. 

Arthur smiled crookedly. “Hurts,” he said, “but again, I thought I was dead, so I cain’t complain.” 

Charles snorted, unimpressed, and jerked his head at the horse in Arthur’s lap. “That’s Falmouth,” he said, instead of any of the angry things Arthur could see buzzing in Charles’s throat like wasps. “When I brought you here she decided she was gonna look after you. She hasn’t left your side.” 

“‘M grateful,” Arthur murmured, scratching the horse’s--Falmouth’s--ears again. “Is she, uh, is she yours? I thought you only had Taima.” 

“She is mine,” Charles acknowledged. For some reason he colored a bit, a hint of a dark blush spreading across his face. “She’s, uh, new. I’ve only had her a few weeks. I, uh. I came back here, after we--after we fought. I was upset, and I saw her for sale in some overcrowded field on the way here. I got out to take a look at her and realized I couldn’t leave her there. She was… kind of an impulse buy.” 

Arthur chuckled hollowly. “You’ve spent too much time w’me,” he said. “Sounds like somethin’ I’d do.” 

“It does,” said Charles, kicking the ground a little, and Arthur was reminded of their first date together, of coming up on Lost Country and watching Charles kick gravel across the parking lot, pacing in front of the door. 

_ He’s nervous,  _ Arthur thought. 

That was a good sign, wasn’t it? It had to be--if Charles didn’t want anything to do with Arthur, he wouldn’t have peeled Arthur up off the road in Lemoyne and brought him--well, brought him to wherever they were now. 

“She’s real pretty,” Arthur offered, just as nervous. He cleared his throat. “Where, uh, where are we? Las’ thing I remember, I was in Lemoyne. I thought I was--well,” he said. He’d thought that he was dying, lurching blindly through the dark. He’d thought he’d drown in the swamp or bleed to death there at the edge of the road, or worse. 

“I brought you home,” said Charles quietly. “You’re in South Dakota. Pine Ridge. I’m, uh, sorry about sticking you out here.” He waved a hand to encompass the lean-to, the hard-packed floor, the pervading smell of horse. “I don’t keep a house up here--we’re on my aunt’s farm, and she’s got a rule about letting white boys into the house.” 

Arthur cracked a smile at that. “I ain’t mind,” he assured Charles. “I’ve woken up in worse places, with worse company.” 

“Yeah,” Charles said, studying Arthur. “I’m starting to imagine, I think. When you said that you were in a biker gang--” 

“I weren’t kiddin’, no,” Arthur said. “We were-- _ are _ , I guess, since we ain’t ever really stopped doin’ illegal shit--one percenters. Genuine outlaws, Dutch used to say.” 

“Jesus,” said Charles. 

Arthur grimaced. “Yeah. ‘S been a minute since we’ve been out on a raid, though. It usually don’t go this bad for me.” He gestured at his injured shoulder. 

“What happened?” Charles asked. Arthur looked him in the eye and decided to trust him. If Charles wanted to go to the police and get Arthur arrested--get the whole gang arrested, because Arthur knew the federals would lean on RICO, well. That was a risk Arthur was willing to take. 

He trusted Charles. 

“We went to go get John back,” said Arthur. “Sean went down to Lemoyne yesterday--or a few days ago, I dunno how long I’ve been out--an’ sussed out where the Raiders were holed up. Back in the day they used to have a clubhouse right there in the middle’a Rhodes, but they’ve been pushed out to the swamps in recent years, were hidin’ out in some fallin’-down plantation house.

“We got to John okay. He was gettin’ his ass beat in some shed. But we were seen gettin’ him outta there, an’ the Raiders gave chase. We ended up in the water. I--I was movin’ too slow, I guess. I had John across my back. I got shot.” He gestured to his shoulder again. 

“I dropped John,” Arthur continued, determined to get it out before the mounting thundercloud in Charles’s eyes could burst. “Dutch grabbed him, got me back on my feet. We were runnin’ through the water, but the Raiders were catchin’ up, an’ I figured it was better to--to lead the Raiders off after me instead of lettin’ up catch up to all of us, since I’d been shot already.” 

“So you drew them off,” said Charles, flatly. 

Arthur nodded, still scratching Falmouth’s cheek. It was hard to look at the expression in Charles’s face, too hard, so Arthur looked away. 

“Don’ remember much after that,” Arthur admitted, voice a whisper. Charles was upset, Arthur could tell, but he didn’t know quite why. If it weren’t for the pain in his shoulder and the pervasive smell of horse shit, Arthur’d think that he  _ had  _ died, and was now in his own personal heaven or hell. 

But heaven probably didn’t smell like horse shit and hell wouldn’t have Charles in it, so Arthur was definitely alive. He examined that thought for a minute. 

Arthur didn’t know how he’d gone from Lemoyne to South Dakota, or how long he’d been out between the two places. But he  _ was  _ here, and Charles’s horse had her head in Arthur’s lap, and somebody had cleaned out Arthur’s shoulder and kept him alive. Seemed like a waste of effort with very little reward, except maybe the pleasure of strangling Arthur to death himself. 

“How’d you find me?” Arthur asked, risking another glance at Charles. “I didn’t--by the time the Raiders were done with me I had no idea where I was. Couldn’t tell up from down.” 

“Mister Matthews,” said Charles. “He called me at two in the morning. I’d just gotten back here, put Falmouth out in the field.  _ He’d  _ gotten a call from Sean, in Emerald Ranch. Said you’d gone down to Lemoyne and hadn’t made it back, and that he was worried. Said he had a friend looking for you in Lemoyne itself, since I was three states north, but that if you were alive, you’d need a place to lay low.”

“He called you?” Hosea must’ve been real worried, then. He must’ve thought that Arthur  _ had  _ died, and was sending Charles to go find Arthur’s body so Charles could bring it--Arthur--back home. 

Arthur couldn’t remember the last time Hosea’d called on somebody outside the club to help handle club business. 

_ Dutch is gonna be pissed,  _ he couldn’t help but think. A botched raid against a rival club wasn’t really the time to be bringing in folks from the outside. 

Charles gave Arthur a withering look. “Hosea has my number, Arthur,” Charles said. “He got it from me after the fight you and John had. He wanted to have a way to get a hold of me in case--well.” 

Charles gestured at Arthur. 

Arthur grimaced. That was fair. 

“So I got in the Bonneville and drove ten hours down to Wichita, where I got  _ another  _ call from Hosea. He said you’d been shot down in Lemoyne and that a friend of his had found you,” Charles continued, tone almost deceptively mild. Arthur had to fight not to cringe into Falmouth’s barrel, let her hide him from Charles’s justified anger. 

Mary hadn’t liked it when Arthur’d come back bloody, either. Eliza hadn’t really cared, had just wanted Arthur to keep it all away from Isaac, but Mary’d always been pissed when Arthur had come to her with a broken nose or bloody knuckles. 

“So I waited in Wichita for a few hours,” Charles pressed on, voice sharpening with each word he said, “until the  _ whitest _ white guy I’ve ever met pulled in with you unconscious in the back seat of his Lincoln, and we got you into my car so I could bring you back here. To hide you from the feds, because you went down and raided a rival gang’s clubhouse, got shot, and then got  _ left behind. _ ” 

“I didn’t want to get shot,” Arthur snapped hotly, pushing Falmouth’s head away as gently as he could with just one working arm. He didn’t want to be on the ground for this, vulnerable and exposed. “It ain’t like I  _ planned  _ this.”

Arthur was decidedly uncomfortable with the idea of being passed around from car to car like a sack of bricks. If it had been that much of the burden, why bother? Why not just leave Arthur breathing water in the bayou, and let nature take its course? 

“Seems to me that if you go waltzing in through a house full of biker shithead thugs, you’d expect to get shot,” Charles returned, just as hot. “The Raiders have a reputation--we’ve heard of them up  _ here _ \--but you thought, what? You’d just saunter in, grab John, and come away clean?” 

“I’d  _ hoped, _ ” Arthur growled. He struggled to his feet, grunting, lips whitening against the pain. “An’ anyway, better me’n John, or Javier, or Sean.”

“They  _ left  _ you,” Charles said, brow furrowing. “You’re only alive ‘cause Hosea had the good sense to have another set of eyes and hands watching the swamp in case something went wrong.”

Arthur had a dim memory of a light slashing through the darkness, a flashlight held in a shaking hand. 

“ _ That  _ man was driving up and down the Bolger County backroads, listening for gunshots,” Charles continued, helping Arthur piece that night together. Bolger County was south of Rhodes and west of where the Raiders’ clubhouse was; Arthur had made it farther in the dark than he’d thought. “Trelawny, he said his name was. He found you before the Raiders did, and took off with you before the Raiders made it out scouring the roadsides.”

“I--well, obviously I’m glad somebody found me,” Arthur snapped, confused. He hadn’t seen Trelawny in a while, but the man had an uncanny habit of turning up exactly where and when he was most needed. Trelawny had never needed to fish Arthur directly out of trouble, but he’d helped out the other boys a time or two, and didn’t mind doing it because Hosea always saw to it that Trelawny was well-rewarded for his efforts. Trelawny was a devilishly fast talker, too. If the Raiders  _ had  _ caught up with him, Arthur had no doubts that Trelawny could’ve wormed his way out of trouble without too much effort.

Another thought occurred to Arthur, and his blood ran cold. 

_ I shouldn’t be here. Bein’ here puts Charles in danger. If the Raiders’re lookin’ for me _ … “Better him’n the Raiders, I ain’t denyin’ that, but--”

“But what?” Charles said, challenging. He took a step forward and Arthur took a step back, almost bewildered by Charles’s reaction. He tripped against Falmouth and had to steady himself against her withers. “But  _ what,  _ Arthur? But we should’ve left you to die anyway?” 

“Well, yeah,” Arthur said. He didn’t understand why Charles was so upset. “I’m real gald y’didn’t, but it would’a made more sense. The Raiders’re dangerous enough t’folks like me, but to  _ you _ \--” 

Charles threw his hands up in the air. “You think I didn’t know that?” Charles exploded. “I don’t need you to tell me how  _ dangerous  _ racist shitheads can be, Arthur, I’ve had to deal with them my whole life. You think there’s a bunch of half-Lakota Black guys running around in big rigs?” 

“Well, no,” Arthur said, thrown off balance by more than just his injury. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Charles was getting Arthur all turned around. “It’s jus’... Charles, my life ain’t worth you riskin’ yours.” 

Charles stared at him. 

“Who told you that?” Charles said, after what felt like a terrible eternity. “Dutch?” 

“It ain’t like that,” Arthur said, dangerously. The echoes of his and Charles’s first argument about all of this hung over them like a ghost. “Charles, it ain’t like that, an’  _ I  _ don’t appreciate you goin’ ‘round, throwin’ everythin’ Dutch has ever done for me in my face when you don’t have the whole story!” 

“It’s not my fault I don’t have the whole story!” Charles shouted, his anger startling the horse. “ _ You’re  _ the one running around with secrets stuffed up your sleeves, and that’s fine, you don’t owe me anything, but from where I’m standing, it looks--” 

“It looks like what,” Arthur spat. 

Charles stepped back and shook his head. “It looks like Dutch has got you convinced that the best thing you can do for anybody is die,” he said. The words fell out of his mouth and hit the ground like stones. 

“Charles,” said Arthur, heart wrenching in his chest. “That ain’t… That ain’t what I was tryin’ to do in Lemoyne.”

“No?” Charles asked, tone sharp as a wolf’s tooth. He gestured across the space between himself and Arthur. “Explain it to me, then. Because to me it looks like you’re ready to throw yourself under any set of tires that passes you by, and I’m not--I want to  _ live,  _ Arthur,” Charles said. “I want to live, and I want to love somebody living. The way you act, the way you talk sometimes… It’s like you think you’re already dead.” 

Arthur opened his mouth, anger jumping to his defense again, but forced himself to close it. 

_ I don’t wanna fight anymore,  _ he thought. Maybe it was his exhaustion talking, the pain he held jammed up behind his teeth, or maybe it was just that Arthur wasn’t a twenty-year-old kid anymore, proud of his ability to pick a fight with anybody. 

Arthur loved Charles. He’d established that pretty well, he’d thought, even though it had taken him a minute to realize that what he’d felt for Charles was love. But Arthur loved him, he did, and he didn’t want to spend all his time fighting around and around in circles. 

He held up his good hand. “Gimme a minute,” Arthur said, roughly. 

Charles blinked, surprised, but closed his mouth. His expression gentled, just a fraction, and his shoulders dropped, just a little. 

“A minute,” Arthur repeated. He met Charles’s eyes and felt like Charles had dipped his fingers behind Arthur’s forehead and unwound all this thoughts, unspooled him and left Arthur in tangles on the floor. “Half an hour, maybe. I need to--I need t’think. I gotta get all my thoughts in order. Alright?” 

Mostly Arthur just wanted to be alone, to bury his face in the nearest pile of hay and scream himself hoarse. His shoulder hurt. His head hurt. His chest hurt. 

“Half an hour,” said Charles, because he’d always given Arthur the space he’d needed up through now. Charles’s mouth was still set in an angry line, but he took another couple of steps back, forced himself to breathe. Despite how mad he obviously was he was still a kind man, and Charles appeared to lean hard on that kindness now. “You hungry? I’ll have my aunt throw something on the stove for you. You’ve been out a while.” 

Charles’s offer took all of the wind out of Arthur’s sails, leaving him deflated, adrift. 

_ We keep yellin’ at each other when all we’re tryin’ to do is help,  _ Arthur thought, rueful. “I’d, uh, I’d eat,” he said, embarrassed by his own behavior and tired of trying to balance it all, to balance keeping the club’s business out of his relationship with Charles, keeping Dutch’s secrets and his own with trying to love Charles like Charles deserved to be loved. 

“An’,” Arthur said, hesitantly. “If your aunt’s got a phone, can you… can you give Hosea a call? Old man’s prob’ly worried.” 

“I called him on Monday, when I made it up here without you dying in the backseat,” Charles said, just as hesitant. “But yeah, I’ll call him again. He’ll be glad to know that you’re awake.” 

Arthur managed a weak smile. “Thanks,” he said, and managed to hold his tongue while Charles backed off, turned around and trudged across the field to that little farmhouse. Arthur waited until he was sure Charles was out of earshot and then let his knees buckle, collapsing back against Falmouth’s side. Sweat beaded his forehead. 

“Jesus Christ,” he grunted, fighting not to slide back down to the ground. He knew if he sat he wouldn’t be able to get up again, and he wanted to be on his feet in case Charles came back still pissed off. 

_ It ain’t like he’s bein’ unreasonable, neither,  _ Arthur thought, unhappy and uncomfortable. Charles had saved his life. There was no denying that. Trelawny might have found Arthur, might have cut through that dark swamp with his flashlight and dragged Arthur away, but Arthur knew Trelawny. Trelawny had all the medical ability of a drunkard with a hacksaw. 

Arthur knew who’d bandaged his shoulder. Who’d cleaned out his wound. Who’d given him a place to rest somewhere so far outside of his usual haunts that nobody, not the Raiders or the feds or anyone else, would find him until Arthur was ready to be found.

_ Hell, Charles is even gonna feed me,  _ he thought. He braced himself against Falmouth’s side and forced himself to stand up straight again. The sweet horse let him and Arthur thought that he might adore her, a little bit. If Arthur had her color and conformation right, Falmouth was a Nokota. Arthur’d always wanted one of those. It was a shame Charles had gotten to her first. 

_ After all that, he’s gonna feed me. He’s gonna call Hosea an’ let Hosea know I’m alright.  _

Arthur owed Charles--something. He wasn’t sure what he could offer to offset the debt he owed. The truth offered in exchange for his life seemed like the least he could do, but telling Charles the truth--the  _ whole  _ truth--didn’t affect just Arthur’s life. The rest of them were bound up in it too, Dutch and Hosea, Javier and John, the women, the young fellers, the dried-up old ones like Bill and Uncle. 

If Arthur told Charles everything and Charles went running off to the feds, all of them would be affected. Dutch, Arthur and Hosea’d go inside for the rest of their lives. Bill too, probably, and Micah, though that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. John’d do at least twenty-five years, Javier thirty or forty. Abigail would probably do at least five. 

_ What kinda life would that be for the boy?  _ Arthur chewed his lip, thinking of little Jack. It’d be no kind of life--it’d be the life that Arthur and John and Javier had all escaped, the life that Charles had endured until he’d reached eighteen and aged out. A life lived in the homes of strangers. 

Arthur knew, in his head, that the foster care system was a little better now than it had been when he’d been a boy, but it still wasn’t a life he’d wish on Jack, not when Jack had a mother who loved him and a father who did too, somewhere deep in that thick skull of his. 

Doing time in prison would probably kill Karen. Mary-Beth too, though for different reasons. Tilly’d survive it but come out even more disaffected and Sadie would survive it too and come out full mad. 

If Arthur trusted in Charles and his trust was misplaced, Arthur would ruin the lives of everybody else he loved. He’d undo everything he’d meant to do by drawing the Raiders off in that dark, stinking swamp.

_ But Charles ain’t gonna go runnin’ to no cops,  _ Arthur thought. Arthur’s judgement might be clouded by how he felt about Charles, but he knew, in his bones, that Charles was worthy of Arthur’s trust. Charles wouldn’t turn on him. 

He might decide that he wanted nothing to do with Arthur, but he wouldn’t rat him out to the feds or to the Raiders or to anybody. 

_ I can trust him. _

Arthur chewed on the problem while Charles was gone. He didn’t trust himself to pace without passing out but he could stand up, could lean against the very obliging Falmouth and, for once in his life,  _ think.  _

_ The main problem,  _ Arthur decided,  _ is that Charles thinks Dutch don’t care about what happens to me.  _

That wasn’t true. Dutch loved Arthur. It wasn’t like he’d told Arthur to walk into that shotgun slug. The whole situation with the Raiders was mostly Dutch’s fault, Arthur’d admit that readily and whole-heartedly, but Dutch hadn’t meant to get anybody hurt. 

Shit happened, sometimes. Shit went south. This time Arthur’d paid the price for it, Arthur and John both, but now that Dutch had seen what getting too greedy had done, Arthur was sure Dutch would back off, lie down, let this whole idea of running guns and moonshine and god knew what else through West Elizabeth and Rhodes die a quiet death. 

Things could go back to the way they’d been. There was no place for Dutch’s Boys Motorcycle Club anymore, and Dutch’d see that now that blood had been spilled over it. Hosea’d talk him around. 

But just because things had blown up in the swamp didn’t mean that Dutch had wanted Arthur to die down there, or had somehow trained Arthur to think of himself as expendable. 

Arthur just--Arthur just  _ was.  _ The others, they were still young. His brothers were young, the women were young, Lenny and Sean and Kieran were young. Arthur was old and worn out. He was set in his ways. The others still had a chance to--to be something different. To change, to make something of themselves. 

That, in Arthur’s opinion, was worth dying over. 

_ I just gotta explain that to Charles,  _ Arthur thought. Down by the farmhouse there was movement. Charles stepped out, holding something in both hands, and began to make his way back towards the lean-to. 

Arthur heard Charles whistle, high and sharp, and as Arthur watched another horse came loping across the field and fell in behind Charles’s elbow, nosing at him as he walked. 

“You, uh,” Charles said, once he was within earshot again. “You still up to eating? And talking?”

Arthur forced himself to smile, crooked and wan. “Honestly?” he said. “No, prob’ly not, but I’d rather get it--get it all out, while I’ve still got the nerve.” 

Charles shook his head, but Arthur thought that the exasperation in his face was mostly fond, instead of angry like it had been half an hour ago. “Fine by me,” he said. “I brought somebody to meet you, by the way.” He tipped his head back at the new horse.

The horse at Charles’s elbow was about the same size as Falmouth and just as strikingly pretty. Arthur knew her right away, having seen her picture in Charles’s rig. 

“Hey there, girl,” he said lowly, beckoning Taima over with a few crooked fingers. She eyed him for a minute, ears half-pinned like she was trying to decide whether or not Arthur was friendly, but seeing as he still had Falmouth pressed up behind him like an overgrown puppy, Taima gave in and leaned around Charles just enough to investigate Arthur, snuffling at his fingers. 

“She is pretty, Charles,” Arthur said, holding still so he didn’t spook her. 

Charles smiled. “Yeah, she’s a looker. She knows it, too. Thinks good looks make up for her bad attitude.” 

Arthur chuckled. Apparently deciding that Arthur was an alright sort of feller, Taima stepped out from behind Charles and pressed closer, demanding attention. Arthur let her nose his hair, his forehead and even the pockets of his borrowed shirt. 

He could recognize a peace offering when he saw one. Charles really was spending too much time with Arthur; sending a horse in to make his apologies on his behalf was absolutely a move that Arthur would pull. 

“Thanks,” Arthur said gruffly, not quite meeting Charles’s eyes, before he could lose his nerve and chicken out again. 

Charles said nothing, watchful as always. 

“For lookin’ out for me,” Arthur clarified. “For--for comin’ down an’ gettin’ me in Wichita, even though the risk was, uh. Pretty high.” He’d almost said,  _ Not worth it,  _ but he thought that saying something like that would probably get Charles all worked up again, and Arthur wanted to avoid that if he could. “I woulda died, prob’ly,” Arthur continued. He scratched at his chin, nervous. “An’ I’m glad I didn’t, so. Thanks. Next time I see Trelawny I’ll thank him to. He turns up now an’ again.” 

Charles studied him. He had a baking dish clutched in both hands, held out in front of him like a shield, and whatever was underneath a crumpled cap of tinfoil smelled good enough to wake Arthur’s appetite a little. 

“You just don’t want to have another argument,” Charles said, though he didn’t sound too mad about it. He was probably just as tired of all the fighting they’d been doing as Arthur was. 

Arthur half-smiled. “We’ve been doin’ a lot of arguin’ lately. ‘S prob’ly my fault. I’m stubborn, in case you ain’t noticed yet.” 

Charles snorted, but the half-hour away from Arthur had calmed him down some, taken some of the anger out of his eyes and the slope of his shoulders. “I’m not exactly tractable either,” he admitted, a little sheepish. 

“So we’re both a little hardheaded,” Arthur said. That was probably an understatement. He and Charles had gone at it these last few days like a pair of bighorns fighting over the rights to a particularly choice patch of grass or a nice lady bighorn, which was a bit ridiculous now that Arthur had cooled down enough to think about it, given who Arthur and Charles had been sharing their beds with for weeks. “There’s worse things to be.”

Charles finally returned Arthur’s smile. “There’s worse things,” he agreed. He held out the baking dish, elbowing Taima out of the way when she tried to make off with the tinfoil. “You should eat something, and then we can talk.” 

“Eat with me,” Arthur said. Whatever Charles had  _ did  _ smell pretty good, but Arthur wasn’t going to be up to eating much. Pain had crowded around the edges of his mouth and shriveled his stomach. 

“Oh,” Charles said, and he looked  _ guilty,  _ of all things. “I forgot. These are for you, too.” He shifted his grip on the dish so he could hold onto it one-handed and rooted around in his pocket for a minute, coming up with a few pink oval-shaped pills. 

Arthur eyed them. “What are they?” he asked.

“Percs,” Charles said, even as Arthur’s frown deepened. 

“Got anythin’ lighter?” Arthur asked. He didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but he didn’t mess with Percocets or Vicodin or anything that could lead to Arthur ending up strung out and shaking, out of his mind for anything but another hit. He’d seen a fair few folks get taken out at the knees by Percocet, and knew himself well enough to know he ought to steer clear of that particular temptation. 

“This is about as light as it gets,” Charles said, apologetic. “Unless you wanna make do with expired Tylenol. These are two-point-five mils. My cousin had his wisdom teeth out last month,” Charles added, as Arthur eyed the little pills like they’d leap out of Charles’s hands and bite him. “He’s about your size, if you’re worried they’ll be too strong. But I can run back to the house and get you Tylenol, if you want.”

“I’ll take half of one,” Arthur said, jerking his chin at the percs. His right side was on fire and his head was cloudy with it; he wanted to be able to focus on Charles, to talk to him without reacting to the pain in his shoulder first. 

Charles nodded, split a pill in half with a thumbnail, and handed it over, disappearing the rest of the pills back into his pocket. 

“You mind eating on the floor?” Charles asked, as Arthur popped the half-pill into his mouth and swallowed before he could change his mind. 

“Naw,” Arthur said. “Though if I sit down I ain’t gonna get up for a minute.” 

“You got somewhere else to be?” Charles said pointedly, though he sounded almost amused, which Arthur took for a good sign. Arthur slowly sat down on the lean-to’s floor, wincing, while Charles set down the covered dish and shooed the horses out so the two of them could sit together and eat. 

“I cain’t believe you got so mad at me you went out an’ bought a horse,” Arthur said, watching Falmouth and Taima go, Taima loping off at a spirited trot, tossing her pretty head with as much attitude as Arthur’d ever seen from a mare while Falmouth plodded along at a slower, more sedate pace. 

“I’d been looking to get a second one for a while now,” Charles admitted, settling himself down across from Arthur, folding his legs underneath himself neatly and producing a pair of forks from another one of his many pockets. “All of yours seem… happier with company.”

Arthur smiled. Charles pulled the tinfoil away, revealing a kind of dark, fragrant stew. Arthur saw meat, carrots, potatoes. Despite how badly his shoulder still hurt, the whole thing smelled so good Arthur’s stomach rumbled. 

“It’s  _ wohanpi, _ ” Charles explained. “It’s good. It’ll help you keep your strength up, my aunt says. She makes it any time one of us kids is sick or hurt.” 

“Tell her thanks, for me,” Arthur said. 

Charles smiled. “She’s doing her best to pretend you don’t exist,” he said, using his fork to take the first bite, spearing a piece of meat. “Her policy’s always been a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of thing. Less incriminating that way.” 

Arthur chuckled. “How often do you drag half-dead white boys into her shed?” he asked. 

Charles narrowed his eyes at Arthur. 

Arthur was grateful for Charles’s good manners; while he was busy chewing, he couldn’t start yelling at Arthur again. Arthur had no such good habits, so he speared a piece of meat of his own and chewed it carefully, wincing as the movements of his jaw twinged down his neck and pulled at his shoulder. 

The food was good, though. It was bison, if Arthur could taste it right, darker and leaner than plain beef. It had been cooked in some kind of mild spice that warmed him through and through. 

“I’m starting to see a pattern here,” Charles observed, once he’d swallowed. “Buying horses, dragging you up and down the Midwest… You got any other bad habits that I have to worry about picking up?” 

Arthur’s heart lurched. The way Charles phrased that made it sound--made it sound like he wasn’t quite through with Arthur yet. Made it sound like he was willing to hear Arthur out, at least.

“I think you know ‘em all by now,” Arthur said, carefully. “I don’t--I don’t try t’make a habit of this, Charles.” Arthur gestured at his wrapped shoulder with his fork, then speared himself a piece of potato, because the potatoes also looked good. 

“You don’t make a habit of throwing yourself in front of a gun without looking first?” Charles asked, pointedly. 

Arthur grimaced. “Not… guns, necessarily. But I’m--it’s always been my job t’look out for folks,” Arthur tried to explain. “That’s always been the way it was. Is. I ain’t--I ain’t stopped doin’ it jus’ ‘cause we settled down an’ mostly stopped bein’ outlaws.” Arthur’d always been the strongest and fiercest member of Dutch’s Boys, the sturdiest and the most stubborn. Arthur got in between the others and danger because Arthur was pretty hard to kill. He always had been.

“I think,” Charles said, picking his words just as carefully as Arthur was, trying to avoid another fight, “that you need to tell me what it was like for you, before you all settled down in Valentine. I don’t understand. I’ve never been in a biker gang.” 

“Motorcycle club,” Arthur corrected, automatically. 

Charles gave him a flat stare. 

Arthur sighed.  _ Charles knows most of it already,  _ he thought. Charles knew about Isaac, knew a fair bit about Arthur’s childhood. And he was harboring a fugitive, technically, with the full knowledge that Arthur's committed a crime or six down in Lemoyne. Charles had brought Arthur to his childhood home anyway, even though he’d made himself an accessory in the process. 

That was the kind of loyalty Hosea and Dutch had tried to raise Arthur on, Arthur realized. Fierce, unthinking loyalty.

So Arthur took a deep breath, set his fork down, and searched for a place to start. There were half a hundred threads he could tug on to send the whole thing unraveling. That hotel in Reno where he’d tried to pinch Dutch’s wallet. The first time he’d sat on the back of a bike. The third failed foster home, or the sixth, or the thirteenth. 

_ Might as well go back to the beginning,  _ he thought.  _ The real beginning, for me.  _

“My name,” said Arthur quietly, “is Arthur Morgan.” 

Arthur talked until his voice gave out. He talked until the sun shifted and the stew between him and Charles went cold. He talked about Dutch and the crime he’d committed by making Arthur his son. He talked about the old days, the earliest days, when Dutch and Hosea had been two disaffected young men cast out by the world and Arthur had been their tagalong. He talked about Dutch teaching Arthur how to read, properly read, and Hosea showing Arthur how to balance a budget, how to make ten dollars stretch to twenty. 

He talked about the less than savory parts of it all, too. How Dutch and Hosea’s disaffected, low-level petty crime had slowly turned into a genuine enterprise, how they’d fallen in with Colm O’Driscoll for a season or two and seen how efficient a motorcycle club could be. 

Dutch and Colm had fallen out, Colm’d killed Annabelle, Dutch had killed Colm’s brother Colin, and Dutch’s Boys had been born in that bloodshed, Dutch’s influence rising as Colm’s fell. 

Eliza and Isaac were mixed up in that time. John and Javier. Bill’d been their first real recruit, a man blooded instead of a half-grown stray, and after Bill had come the rest of them, the ranks of Dutch’s Boys filling out to meet their bottomless appetite for  _ more _ \--more money, more cons, more territory and more power, most of it stolen from other clubs and gangs.

The Callander boys had been friends of Bill’s. Uncle’d been a buddy of Hosea’s from the Korean War. Mrs. Grimshaw’d taken up with Dutch for a while and then had stuck around after his eyes had started to wander. Pearson’d liked the feeling of power he got from wearing a kutte. 

Some had folks died. Others had left. New blood had joined to replace the old. Arthur’s son had died and Arthur’d lost his mind, sunk himself deep into the blood and filth that came with running an outlaw MC. He’d done everything Dutch had asked him to, up until Hosea had pulled Arthur out of it by the scruff of his neck. 

“We ended up in Valentine ‘cause Dutch killed somebody,” Arthur said, what felt like hours later. The half-tab of Percocet had taken the barest edge off the burn in his shoulder, taming it from a fire to a throb, hot and sore. Arthur’s throat was worn from speaking so much. 

“Who’d he kill?” Charles asked. 

Arthur lifted his good shoulder. “A girl, I think. A woman. I weren’t there. Me an’ Hosea were workin’ another angle, a… less volatile one. The woman was a cee-eye, workin’ for the local police up in the Pacific Northwest. She’d been posin’ as a hooker, or was actually a hooker. Like I said, I ain’t ever been real clear. Whatever she was she started hangin’ around, gettin’ into our good graces while Dutch an’ a few of the others were workin’ this job, an’ once Dutch realized she was settin’ him up, he jus’... snapped. Killed her, abandoned the gun deal he’d been tryin’ to set up, an’ we had to run.”

“Why Valentine?” Charles asked. He hadn’t said much, only asked a few questions here and there to straighten out a detail or two. 

Arthur smiled, tiredly. “Nothin’ ever happens in Valentine,” Arthur said. “With the girl dead, the cops had nothin’ to pin on Dutch, but the feds had gotten involved, were sure that he--that  _ we-- _ were up to no good. This was back in eighty-nine, after the Milken case had wrapped up. The feds were startin’ to get  _ real  _ comfortable using RICO to go after folks like us, so Dutch officially broke up the charter an’ moved to Valentine, ‘cause Valentine’s so far away from anythin’ important. The plan was to hide in plain sight, make a go at goin’ straight.” 

“While running guns,” said Charles, flatly. 

Arthur shrugged again. “We weren’t really… it weren’t a big operation,” Arthur said. “At least, not up ‘til a few months ago. We ran handguns, mostly, an’ those only to local boys who didn’t wanna bother goin’ through the state an’ federal process to get their firearms. Honestly, we made more money lettin’ hookers use the bar to pick up johns, or lettin’ kids slide us a twenty here an’ there to overlook a fake eye-dee.”

“But Dutch picked up the gunrunning, though?”

Arthur nodded, reluctantly. “Yeah. Right ‘round the time I met you, actually. There’s been, I dunno, some unforeseen expenses lately, drained the reserves. Folks’re havin’ a hard time makin’ rent. Or Dutch was gettin’ restless, was missin’ the glory days. I dunno anymore. That’s when we started runnin’ through Van Horn an’ Rhodes an’ West Elizabeth.” 

Charles was very quiet and very still. Arthur let him have his silence. He’d worn himself out speaking, but he had been honest. He’d told Charles just about all of it. Charles now had more information on Arthur and on Dutch’s Boys than probably anybody else outside of the club. 

Arthur’d kept Mary in the dark because he’d hated how she’d lectured him, and he’d tried to keep Eliza and Isaac out of it because he hadn’t wanted them to worry about him when he’d been gone, or to darken their doorstep with his bullshit. 

But Arthur was tired of keeping it all from Charles and he wanted-- 

_ I want this to work, goddamnit,  _ he thought.  _ I want it to work. An’ it ain’t gonna work if I keep lyin’, to cover my own ass or anyone else’s.  _

So he talked until he had run out of words, and then he just sat there, watching Charles, while Charles watched him back.

“Arthur,” said Charles, after a very long, thoughtful silence. “You understand why I’m concerned, right?” 

Arthur nodded. He did. Arthur’s loyalty to Dutch ran so deep it touched the core of the earth. It ran past all reason. Arthur knew, logically, that having such blind faith in Dutch was… a risk. Dangerous. Much as Arthur loved him, he  _ knew  _ that Dutch was only a man, and sometimes an impulsive and cruel one at that. 

But logic had never really figured into how Arthur felt about Dutch, and he wasn’t sure he could pry himself loose enough to let logic slip in. 

“Arthur, Dutch left you to die,” Charles said. 

“I know,” said Arthur, a little helplessly, “but I told him to.” 

Charles pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay,” he said. 

Arthur eyed him.  _ It’s not gonna be that easy.  _ “Okay?” he repeated. 

“Okay,” said Charles. He spread his hands when Arthur looked at him, confused. “What d’you want me to say, Arthur? That I want you to quit? That I want you to leave the ga--club,” he corrected, when Arthur started to scowl. “You’ve just spent the last hour telling me how important the club is to you. How important  _ Dutch  _ is to you. If you can hold those two things in your head, that you love him, but that he left you to die…” 

“I told him to,” Arthur repeated, firmly. 

Charles made an impatient, anguished sound. “How am I supposed to live with that?” he asked. “You can hold those two things in your head, that’s fine, but how am  _ I  _ supposed to? To hold the fact that I want to share my life with you in one hand, and the fact that you might up and throw your life away because Dutch asks you to in the other?” 

“I--wait,” Arthur said. He swallowed. “You… you want to share your life with me?”

Charles stared at him. “Arthur,” he said, “why else do you think I bought a second fucking horse?” 

“You said you bought Falmouth ‘cause you were mad at me.”

“I was mad at you,” said Charles. “I  _ am. _ But I saw her in that pen and thought,  _ Wow, she’d fit right in with Arthur’s horses, _ so I stopped and picked her up before I could talk myself out of it, because I was thinking of bringing her and Taima down to Ambarino. And--and myself too, if you’d have me.”

“I was gonna ask you t’move in with me,” Arthur admitted quietly. “Before--before that O’Driscoll set fire t’the barn, and before I had to go get John. I was tryin’ t’figure out how to--how to ask you.” 

Charles put his head in his hands and groaned. “We’re really bad at this,” he said, voice muffled.

Arthur laughed. “We are,” he said. He hesitated. Somehow, despite all the shit he’d told Charles tonight, despite all the graves Arthur’d dug up telling Charles the story, the whole story, he was still nervous. 

“Charles,” Arthur said, pushing past it, curling his hands into loose fists to hide how they shuddered, “D’you wanna--will you move in with me?” 

Charles looked up from his hands. He was quiet for a long time, his dark eyes unfathomable. Arthur let him have his silence, his thoughts. He owed Charles that, at least, and more besides. 

“I want to,” Charles finally said, just as quiet. “But I don’t know if I should.”

Arthur flinched. 

“That’s not a--that’s not me saying that I won’t,” Charles said, and his words echoed their very first argument in the hills of Ambarino, except the roles were reversed.

_ Irony, Hosea’d call it. _

“I want to,” said Charles again. “But I’m--I don’t know. How would that even work? You being in your--in your motorcycle club on the weekends, playing house with me during the week?”

“It wouldn’t be  _ playin’ house, _ ” said Arthur fiercely. He wouldn’t do that to Charles. “It’d be--listen, Dutch tried t’have it both ways, an’ it didn’t work. We cain’t have the shop in Valentine an’ a fuckin’ gunrunnin’ empire on the side. Those days’re over. Now that all this’s happened, he’ll see reason, an’ it’ll all go back to the way it was before.”

Lost Country would serve coffee in the mornings and beer in the evenings. Arthur would go to work and chase drunks out of the back room. He’d listen to Mary-Beth and Tilly complain about bad customers and nosy neighbors. He’d go home and mind his horses, and he’d take Jack fishing on the weekends, and he’d give Charles every other spare moment that he had.

Charles looked at Arthur. “Dutch will see reason,” he said, flat as a question. 

Arthur had the same stab of doubt, but he shoved past it. “Yes,” he said, firmly. Strongly. “I’ll  _ make  _ him see reason, if he don’t wanna do it on his own. But he--with John hurt, with me hurt, he’ll  _ see.  _ There ain’t no place for Dutch’s Boys in the world no more. It’s time we gave it up.” 

“You mean that,” Charles reflected, rocking back a little bit. Some of the grim desperation around his eyes had faded, replaced by a very fragile and tentative hope, delicate as an eggshell. 

“I do,” Arthur said. He scratched the back of his neck, grimacing as his shoulder throbbed again, the half-tab of Percocet already wearing off. “I been, I dunno. Been ready for it all t’end for a while, I think. There’s--well.”

There was only so long Arthur could carry all that anger, all that hatred. Dutch talked a big game about how the club had been about changing the world, how it had been about freedom and justice and all that other shit, but Arthur had been there when Dutch’s Boys had been born, and he knew the truth.

They’d all just been so goddamn  _ angry _ at everything, and the club had been their way of clawing back at the world that had kicked them down and cast them aside. Arthur the orphan, Hosea the hippie, Dutch the dreamer. 

The world hadn’t wanted any of them and they’d torn at the world to get even, but those days were over and done with now. There had been no getting even, because the world was the  _ world _ \--it was always going to win, and Arthur knew that now. 

But there was still peace to be had, in quiet little pockets of it all. Freedom. Happiness. Arthur knew because he’d  _ seen  _ it--he’d held it in his hands, run his fingers through it like fine strands of hair. 

Charles must have seen all of that in Arthur’s face, must’ve read him like a book, because he finally nodded, a faint smile tugging the corner of his mouth, and said, “Alright.”

Arthur blinked at him. “Alright?”

“Alright,” said Charles. “You convinced me.”

Arthur tackled him.

Well, Arthur tried to tackle him. He was still clumsy and ungainly and he only got halfway off his ass before pain blinded him and he toppled over like an unsteady toy, but Charles saw him getting up and reached out in half a panic to catch him so Arthur still ended up in Charles’s arms, which was what he’d wanted anyway, even if getting there had hurt a hell of a lot. 

“You’re an idiot,” Charles growled at him, trying to be mindful of Arthur’s bandaged shoulder. 

Arthur managed to smile at Charles through the grimace twisting his mouth, through the tears of pain prickling at his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “I really am.” 

\---

Proclamations of love aside, Charles’s aunt still wouldn’t let Arthur in the house, which Arthur couldn’t blame her for, so Charles fetched an air mattress from a cousin’s place down the road and they slept on that tucked together in the lean-to, Falmouth and Taima snuffling nearby and the smell of horse shit all-pervasive. 

It sucked, a little bit. The air mattress hadn’t been made to support two two-hundred and twenty pound men, so it bowed in the middle and tipped Arthur and Charles into each other no matter how much they tried to arrange themselves to spread their weight evenly across the mattress.

It leaked, too, and squeaked, and groaned. Arthur’s feet dangled off the edge. It wasn’t great for somebody with a hole in their shoulder and it turned out that August nights in South Dakota were a lot like August nights in New Hanover, which meant hot and sticky. 

But Charles’s body was familiar and he had insisted on folding Arthur to his chest--not that Arthur’d protested much--and the smell of him set Arthur’s mind at ease, the strength of his arms, the slow beat of his heart against Arthur’s cheek. 

Arthur didn’t sleep, not really, but he did drowse, and dozing there in Charles’s arms gave Arthur more rest than he usually got in a night in bed by himself. 

They didn’t talk anymore, even though there was still more to talk about. There was the future to discuss, the doors that were open before them, and the past to talk about too. But they didn’t need to talk about  _ all  _ of today, not when Arthur was ragged with pain and Charles with several near-sleepness nights. 

_ There’ll be time for it later,  _ Arthur thought to himself, dozing there sticky with the heat and tucked safe beneath Charles’s chin.  _ A whole life’s worth, if Charles gets his way.  _

There would be no one else for Arthur, he knew that now. Even if Charles did eventually get tired of putting up with all of Arthur’s shit, Arthur knew that he himself would never get tired of Charles. 

That realization was better than Percocet, even if it did come to Arthur at two in the morning as Charles got up with a groan to pump more air into the mattress. 

Morning brought Charles’s aunt, a lean, rangy woman with the same crow-dark hair and steady black eyes as Charles, and a plate of eggs. 

If Charles’s aunt was bothered by the sight of two men curled up together in her horses’ lean-to like puppies, she didn’t let Arthur know it. She was too businesslike, crisp and professional, a nurse by trade and training, and she was more concerned with the hole in Arthur’s shoulder than the way he’d settled into Charles’s arms like he’d never get fully untangled from him again. 

Charles’s aunt was a brisk, implacable woman named Ava Pourier, and she wouldn’t hand over the eggs until Arthur had let her get him up and examine the dressing over his shoulder. 

“No sign of infection,” she said, peeling up the edge of the bandage. She was about a full foot shorter than Arthur, so he sat at the edge of the air mattress while Charles watched with a distinctly-amused expression. Ava wore a wedding ring around her finger and a simple gold band on a chain around her neck, and she could have been forty-five or sixty, rangy in the way of cowboys and made tough by hard work. 

Her fingers were gentle, though, as she examined the edges of Arthur’s wound, tested the sticky antibacterial cream and gauze she’d packed the wound with. She peeled the old padding away, washed the hole out even when Arthur had to bite into the side of his good hand to keep from shouting, and applied a new dressing with brisk efficiency. 

Arthur was clearly not the first gunshot moron Charles’s aunt had patched up. 

“Keep that dressing changed often, Charlie,” Ava said. She didn’t bother telling Arthur, guessing correctly by the look of him that he’d forget to do it on his own and probably die of gangrene. 

Charles, mouth full of eggs, nodded and brought two fingers up to his forehead in a little salute. 

To Arthur, Ava said, “I got as much of the slug out of you as I could see, but if you’ve got a doctor you trust, you should have them take a look at it, make sure I didn’t miss anything. Charlie here brought you in the black of the night. I could’ve missed something.”

“I’m sure you didn’t, ma’am,” said Arthur politely. “Thanks for, uh. Patchin’ me up.”

Ava rolled her eyes. “Charlie’s my favorite nephew,” she said. “And he says you’re good for him, so thank him instead. We’ve been trying to get him to settle down for years now. Even if New Hanover is so far away from us, he’s been happy with you.” 

Arthur blinked, startled by her honestly, and Charles choked on his eggs. 

“ _ Auntie, _ ” Charles said, sounding put-upon, and Arthur smiled, thinking of the way Dutch and Hosea had eyed Charles up and down, how all the women had dropped by to take a look at him, to get Charles’s measure. 

“I’m real glad t’have him with me,” Arthur said sincerely. 

Ava eyed him for a moment even as Charles went still, surprised and embarrassed. Then Ava nodded, patted Arthur’s cheek, and said something in a language Arthur didn’t understand, though it sounded fond enough. 

“You can stay here for another few days, if you need to,” Ava said, brisk and back to business. “But it might be a good idea to move on, Charlie. Somebody will see him out here sooner or later, and people will talk.”

“If you’re sure he’s not gonna die, I was thinking of leaving tomorrow morning,” said Charles, nudging Arthur’s back with his foot. “This one’s got folks worried about him, and if we leave before the weekend, I can borrow Danny Two Bears’ trailer, move the horses.”

Arthur’s heart did a funny, delighted little lurch at that. 

_ He’s comin’ home with me, _ Arthur thought, nearly giddy.  _ He’s bringin’ the horses.  _

If all it would have taken to get Charles to move in with Arthur was getting shot, Arthur would’ve pissed off the Raiders weeks ago. He could’ve done without all the arguing he and Charles had done in between now and then, all of the rawness Charles had pulled out of Arthur’s teeth, but getting shot wasn’t so bad, not when it meant that Charles was going to come and live with Arthur.

He wisely didn’t voice this opinion, of course, especially not in front of Charles’s aunt. He didn’t want to be yelled at anymore. 

Arthur pulled himself out of his giddy thoughts with some effort. Ava was nodding along, rolling her eyes at something Charles was saying, something about Danny Two Bears and the trailer he’d be borrowing, the logistics of ending one life and starting another. 

“I’ll have Dennis come pick it up from you when you’re settled,” Ava said. “He’s down in Pawhuska through Tuesday. Cutting through Ambarino isn’t too far out of his way. You can borrow my truck to go with Two Bears’ trailer. I’ll have Aaron and Lana bring that awful car of yours sometime soon too.” 

“Works for me,” said Charles, and he blinked at Arthur. 

“Uh, for me too,” Arthur said, catching on, even though he had no idea who Dennis or Aaron or Lana or Danny Two Bears were. Charles’s friends and cousins, Arthur assumed. “I’ll, uh, leave you my address so you can pass it on. They can come by anytime. I’m prob’ly gonna be off work for a while.”

“With that hole in your shoulder, you better,” Ava warned. 

Arthur looked at Charles, alarmed and more than a little intimidated; despite her size, Ava was looking Arthur up and down like she could put him on his knees with a well-aimed kick and knew it too. 

“He’ll rest, Aunt Ava,” Charles assured her. “I’ll keep an eye on him.” 

“Good,” Ava said, “‘cause I’m not cleaning that shoulder out again. Dinner’s at seven. If you want to eat in the Florida room, you can, but you both better wash up first. You smell like a barn.” 

“Yes, auntie,” Charles said, as Arthur murmured an abashed “Yes’m” of the same tone and timbre he would give to Mrs. Grimshaw. 

Charles waited until she’d left before he shifted, the air mattress hissing a protest, to press alongside Arthur from knee to shoulder, passing him the plate of eggs. 

“You’ve been upgraded to the Florida room,” Charles said, his eyes laughing. “That means she likes you.”

“‘Course she likes me,” Arthur grunted, playing along. “She called me a--a  _ witko _ \--a  _ witkota _ \--”

“She called you a _ witkótkoka, _ ” said Charles, amused. “It means  _ huge dumbass _ .” 

Arthur took a bite of his eggs. “Naw,” he decided. “You’re makin’ that up. I think it means,  _ handsome feller who puts up with a lot’a needless bullyin’ from my rude neph _ \--hey!” 

Charles did shove Arthur off the air mattress, but he did it very gently. 

\---

Ava fed them dinner in her Florida room, corn on the cob and fry bread and a steaming plate of chicken and beans, and let Arthur and Charles sleep there on a pull-out sofa instead of in the lean-to on the thoroughly-defeated air mattress. 

Arthur and Charles stuck to careful, safe topics throughout the day, talking horses and family trees; Arthur’s family wasn’t his blood, but Charles had a sprawling list of cousins and far-flung relations; his mother had been the youngest of five daughters. Ava was Charles’s mother’s sister--his father’s kin were all somewhere in Mississippi--and Ava had half-raised Chalres, in-between raising her own children. 

Arthur convinced Charles to take him for a walk, slow and stilted as it was, through Ava’s fields, the horses trailing along behind them. 

Pine Ridge, the little slice Arthur saw of it, anyway, had flat blue skies and flat, wind-scored fields. There were hills and badlands in the distance, brown and grey and stark, and properties ran together along family lines. 

Charles pointed out all of his cousins’ houses that they could see from behind Ava’s fence. North of Ava’s house was her sister Jenny’s place, squat and blue, and south was the house Charles’s mother had been born in, now occupied by one of Jennie’s sons and his family. 

Most people had a horse or two on their property, rangy, wooly things with American Paint and mustang blood, but only Ava had a car sitting in her driveway. A few dogs ran loose up and down the road. A red-tailed hawk cried out fiercely from up in the sky. 

They had washed up after their walk, Arthur panting and worn-out, had dinner, slept on the pull-out without any bad dreams. 

In the morning Ava deposited some oatmeal in their hands and shooed them off before the sun had fully broken over the horizon, not that Arthur complained. 

He thanked Ava, sincerely, for her hospitality and for likely saving his fool life. Ava had apparently grown fond enough of Arthur to pat his cheek, half-maternal, even as Charles watched with a little pleased smile on his face. 

Charles drove. They took Ava’s truck and went up the road to pick up a trailer from Danny Two Bears, who turned out to be an older feller with long grey hair and a droopy grey mustache. Arthur passed out in the backseat of the truck Charles borrowed from his friend Danny, worn thin with pain. Charles and Danny had gotten Taima and Falmouth loaded up alright and the drive across the near-endless plains of South Dakota heading south and east for New Hanover. 

Arthur couldn’t believe that Charles had made this drive all by himself with Arthur in the back seat, bloody and dying. It had taken Charles almost a full twenty-four hours. He’d pulled the timeline out of Charles between breakfast and dinner the day before. 

Arthur had driven down to Lemoyne with the boys on a Saturday. Trewlany’d found Arthur very early on Sunday morning, a few hours after Hosea had called Charles up, and Charleshad driven through the day going south to Wichita as fast as he could. Trelawny had handed Arthur off sometime in the evening on Sunday. It had been Monday morning before Charles had made it back to Pine Ridge, Arthur half-dead in his car, and it was Friday now. Arthur had slept through until Wednesday. 

Lost Country was being watched by the feds. Hosea's managed to communicate that to Charles clearly enough. Apparently Arthur, Dutch and them had killed more than a few Raiders in the swamps, and though the Raiders hadn’t said anything, likely to protect their own boys, who were just as guilty of shooting to kill, the feds had gotten wind of a brace of dead bikers and were sniffing around trying to figure it out. 

Charles couldn’t have taken Arthur to Hosea because Hosea was being watched, and if Charles had shown up with an unconscious, obviously-shot Arthur in tow, they all would’ve been arrested. 

Arthur hadn’t woken up until Tuesday afternoon, and it was Thursday now, shading towards Friday the longer they spent on the road. 

“So what’re we gonna do?” Arthur had asked, before Charles had bundled him into the truck. “Are the feds watchin’ my place too?”

“Hosea told them that you were out of town,” Charles had explained. “That you were with me, actually, camping in the backcountry. He bought us a little time.” 

Arthur had sworn, softly. If the feds were watching, they must’ve thought they had a case against Dutch’s Boys. Somebody must’ve seen them moving around Rhodes in the days leading up to the bloodshed, or somebody must’ve tipped the feds off. 

Arthur thought about panicking, just a little, but Charles was quick to point out that there was nothing Arthur could do from the back of a truck while gunshot, so. The argument ended before it even began. 

“Hosea say what the feds’re lookin’ for? What they’ve got on us?” he’d asked, but Charles had only shaken his head. 

“You’ve all been seen in Lemoyne recently,” Charles had explained, and he’d been right; Arthur had run deliveries there for weeks, and John, Javier and Lenny had done it after him when Arthur had been taken off the morning shift. 

“Some feeb heard you’d all been down in Rhodes and put two and two together, Hosea thinks. If they’d had any real evidence, you all would be arrested already.” 

“Great,” Arthur had groaned, “just great,” but there wasn’t really anything he could do about it now. Charles had been right about that.

The feds had been watching Dutch and the rest of them for weeks; Arthur didn’t think it was a coincidence that ATF had started sniffing around pretty much as soon as the bar had started to sell moonshine. 

All of the federal attention made Arthur’s skin itch worse than his healing gunshot. Gone were the days when a local cop had to send a fucking telex to pull up criminal records across state lines; cops had  _ databases  _ now, and the feds had even more power at their fingertips.

_ But there ain’t nothin’ I can do about it,  _ Arthur thought, half-asleep in Charles’s back seat. Charles was humming along to some Garth Brooks song Arthur remembered hearing at the bar on Singles Night, and Arthur had consented to taking another half-tab of Percocet to compensate for the rough road heading out of Pine Ridge. 

“And the thunder rolls,” Charles sang, and Arthur let himself take a slow, sleepy blink.

He’d sort the feds out when he got home. It would all be alright. 

Arthur slept between Rushville and Ogallala, waking up when Charles turned onto I-76 and stopped to pick up dinner at a dingy roadside dinner before taking the wheel again. 

“I’kin drive,” said Arthur sleepily, trying to rouse himself enough to give Charles a break. 

Charles only smiled at him around a mouthful of French fries. “I could do this in my sleep, Arthur,” he said. “Just relax.” 

Arthur did as he was told and slept some more, only waking up fully when the door slammed and he bolted upright to see that he was home, sitting in the truck in front of his house while Charles got the trailer open and his horses unloaded.

Arthur scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes, grimacing as his shoulder ached, and climbed unsteadily out of the truck after Charles. 

“You can put the horses in the second paddock,” Arthur said, around an enormous yawn. Copper and Cain saw him and came barrelling over, howling fit to burst. Arthur let them rush him, thumping back against the borrowed truck as two extremely loud, barrel-chested hounds made their enthusiasm known. “The barn probably ain’t… ain’t fit for anybody jus’ yet.”

“I don’t know about that,” Charles said, with one hand on Taima’s halter and the other on Falmouth’s. He jerked his chin and Arthur turned, gently shoving his dogs out of the way. Arthur’s mouth opened, surprised. 

Somebody had fixed the damage the O’Driscoll had done to his barn. Gone were the piles of fire extinguisher foam and charred wood. In their place new, sturdy siding had been fixed over the burned and exposed framework of Arthur’s barn and the whole thing had been fitted out with a new coat of paint, the first paddock raked over and tidied up. Honestly, aside from a few singe marks, Arthur could hardly tell the barn had been burned at all.

“Hosea,” Arthur murmured, and his heart swelled. Hosea’d been busy in the days since Arthur had seen him last.  _ Sappy old man. _

“Put ‘em in the barn, then,” Arthur suggested. “They can spend the night there, an’ we can introduce ‘em to the others in the mornin’.”

“Sure,” Charles said, fond, and clicked his teeth, leading his horses off. 

Arthur was tired and sore and oddly sticky, the kind of sticky a person only got after dozing for hours in the sun. He was hungry, too, and longing for his own bed, but before he could even think about going inside and stepping in the shower, he heard a familiar cry come from over the paddock fence. 

Rooster was there at the paddock fence, head hanging over it, and when he saw that Arthur was ignoring him he put his head up and whinnied again, which set off the rest of the horses arrayed beside and behind him. 

Arthur smiled.

Reacquainting  himself with his horses took a minute. They all wanted to snuffle and sniff at him, all wanted to examine him closely, lipping worriedly at his nose and his ears and his hair. Rooster shoved him hard in the chest and Blue nipped at his fingers. Cloudrunner sneezed on him and Lyra nearly jumped the fence in her determination to make sure Arthur was alright. 

Even Reliance, who was still hobbling and sore, put her head over to inspect Arthur for herself, whickering when he leaned his forehead against hers and scratched behind her ears. 

“Falmouth and Taima are settled in,” Charles remarked, coming out of the barn. He rolled his eyes when he saw how ensnared Arthur was, horses pressing in from every side like they thought if they could squish Arthur between them firmly enough he’d never leave them again. 

“‘S good,” Arthur said, voice muffled in Reliance’s neck. Hanging out with Falmouth and Taima had been nice and all, but Arthur had missed his own horses, their smell, their coarse hair. Lia leaned into him just as hard.

Charles laughed and pried Arthur free, looping an easy, proprietary hand through Arthur’s belt and hauling him back out of the horses’ reach, ignoring both the horses’ and Arthur’s muttered protests. 

“G’wan, you,” Charles told the horses. “Go eat. This one’s mine ‘til morning. Not like that,” Charles added, catching the way Arthur brightened at those words. “You’re still on bedrest ‘til I know you won’t die on me.” 

“Aw, c’mon,” said Arthur. “It’s been near a week. If I was gonna die I’d’ve done it already.” 

“No,” Charles said, still pulling Arthur along gently by his belt, offering his broad bicep for Arthur to lean against. “You’re gonna shower, and keep that shoulder dry, while I feed us, and then you’re gonna go to sleep.”

“You’re no fun,” Arthur grumbled, but he did as he was told. He took an awkward shower, managing to keep his still-wrapped shoulder mostly out of the spray, and gulped down the food Charles put before him, some kind of braised chicken over carrots and potatoes, and then he passed out on the couch even though it wasn’t yet seven in the evening, the sun still bright outside, and let Charles go about his own business. Cain and Copper both hopped up on the couch with Arthur and settled down with him. Every time Charles passed, he stopped to ruffle Arthur’s hair. 

Arthur was startled awake some time later by a thunderously-loud knock at the front door. 

“Stay where you are,” Charles said, even as Arthur tried to sit up. 

“‘S prob’ly jus’ Hosea,” Arthur said, but Charles shook his head. 

“Mister Van der Linde” called an unfamiliar voice from the other side of the door, dragging Arthur’s theory out back and shooting it dead. “Mister Van der Linde, Eff-Bee-Eye. Open up, please.” 

Arthur and Charles sat frozen for a minute. Whoever was on the other side of the door knocked again, just as thunderous. 

“We know you’re home, Mister Van der Linde,” the voice called again. “I can see your truck out here. Can you open the door?” 

“Shit,” Arthur said, and heaved himself to his feet and across the room before Charles could tell him not to. He didn’t want the feds knocking his door down, not with Charles in the house. He didn’t want Charles to get caught up in all of that, not so soon after Charles had agreed to move in with him, after Charles had agreed to make a go, a real, proper go, of things.

“Arthur,” Charles hissed, but it was too late. Arthur was across the room and at the door in a second, grateful that his house was tiny. 

Arthur opened the door. 

Two men stood there, one tall and thin, the other shorter and broader. The tall one was dark-haired and beardless, his face pockmarked, maybe fifty, and the shorter one was bald and bearded, maybe thirty. 

“Hi,” said Arthur, keeping the door closed enough that the feds couldn’t push their way in without a fight. Behind him, Copper grumbled. “I help you, gentlemen?” 

“My name,” said the tall one, “is Agent Milton. And I have some questions for you.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: 
> 
> Mentions of injury, mentions of child abuse and neglect within the foster care system, mentions of racism. Arthur takes a few doses of Percocet, which is a decently-powerful opioid painkiller that he probably should have a prescription for. Do not fuck around with opioids. Mildly inaccurate portrayal of the US federal investigation circuit, because a bitch (me) could only handle like five episodes of Criminal Minds. 
> 
> Fun fact, I couldn't decide if Milton was going to show up as an actual federal agent or the county health inspector. 
> 
> Only one left after this one, folks! The final chapter will go up next Sunday, and then the Sunday after that I'll post all my notes and some outtakes/deleted scenes. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, commenting and leaving kudos! I love you all.


	11. new world: iv

Arthur made three decisions at the same time. First, he made the decision to open the door wide enough for a man to walk through. The agents, if they really were agents, craned their necks around to try and see behind Arthur into the depths of the house. Second, Arthur stepped through the open door. 

Third, he closed it behind him, leaving Charles inside, where the two agents couldn't see him. He thought that he heard Charles make a faint sound of protest, but Arthur didn't turn around. 

Charles didn't need this. 

“Gentlemen,” said Arthur as pleasantly as he could manage. “I’m afraid I’m gonna have t’see some eye-dee.”

“Suspicious, are you?” said the tall one, who had identified himself as Milton. 

Arthur shrugged with his good shoulder. “We’re not too fond of new faces ‘round these parts,” he said, which was true. Arthur was only just barely considered a local, despite living here for six years. His claim to being from _'round these parts_ was dubious at best. Still, he knew the rules of the area well enough. Strangers weren’t to be trusted. 

Milton sighed, put-upon, and fished a black leather case out of the pocket of his dress pants. He was dressed well, was Agent Milton. His suit was storm-grey and neatly pressed, his pale shirt tucked neatly into his slacks. His shoes were black and shiny. He looked like a man who cared a great deal about appearances. Arthur filed that impression away for later.

Arthur inspected Milton’s proffered ID first, then the other man’s, whose ID showed him to be an Agent Stern. Arthur had no idea if the two badges, both burnished gold and navy, topped with a spread eagle, were legitimate or not. He hadn’t made a case study of federal badges over the course of his life. 

But they looked real enough, and Arthur’d been expecting a visit from the feds sooner or later. Hosea'd warned Charles and Arthur both, had said that feds were watching the shop, watching various houses. It had only been a matter of time before one or two came knocking at Arthur's door. Arthur weighed his options quickly. Arthur could clam up, refuse to speak to the men without a lawyer. The fact that they hadn’t waived a warrant in Arthur’s face and bulled past him into the house told Arthur that they didn’t  _ have  _ a warrant. 

The feds were here following a hunch, not pursuing a real lead, or at least not a lead they had evidence for. Arthur  _ could  _ clam up, call a lawyer, kick up a fuss. 

_ But Charles is in my house.  _

Arthur didn’t know these men, this Milton and this Stern. He’d never seen them before, had never even heard of them--the last federal Arthur’d had a bead on had been a mean old bastard named Ike Skellding, and Arthur’s information on  _ him  _ was six years out of date. 

He had no idea what kind of men Milton and Stern were. If they were honorable men, just men, who’d follow the letter of the law, or if they were the kind of men who’d hear Arthur asking for a lawyer, take it as an admission of guilt, and smash their way into his house, where Charles was. 

_ No,  _ Arthur thought.  _ I gotta play along.  _

He couldn’t let Milton and Stern find out that he was injured. Several days of bed rest had done Arthur good, but his shoulder was still a mess. Arthur knew that he was carrying the arm stiffly, awkwardly--there wasn’t much to be done about that, given how sore the damn thing was--but he could at least feign a strain or a sprain instead of a gunshot. 

He also couldn’t act like he knew why the two feds were here. That’d tip them off faster than a gunshot wound would. Gunshots could be explained away as a lot of things, in this part of the country; hunting accident, lovers’ quarrel, drunken escapade gone wrong. 

But letting Milton and Stern in to the fact that Arthur’d expected them would only point to the fact that Arthur’d done something wrong. 

_ I’m gonna have to play dumb,  _ he thought.  _ But carefully.  _

“Agents,” said Arthur, solicitous. He swept a hand out over his porch. “Have a seat, yeah? I get you anythin’? Water? Coffee?”

The agents exchanged looks, realizing that Arthur wasn’t going to open up his home and them inside. Arthur just smiled at them blandly. Arthur knew that there was nothing inside that would give him away--Arthur wasn’t a complete idiot--but he wasn’t going to bring them in, not with Charles in the house. Charles had said he couldn't be caught hanging around a man like Arthur. Charles's boss would fire him if he heard that somebody Charles knew was being questioned by the feds.

Finally, Agent Milton broke the polite standoff by sitting, gingerly, on the edge of one of Arthur’s Adirondack chairs, motioning for Agent Stern to do the same. Arthur took a third chair once the other two men had sat down. 

“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” Arthur asked, once they’d all arranged themselves more or less to their liking. Milton’s face was pinched, irritated. Stern was looking around with a detached sort of interest, nothing the horses, the goats, the chickens. Arthur kept his own face still. 

_ Let ‘em see a certified country yokel,  _ he thought.  _ Let ‘em see a good ol’ boy dozin’ on his front porch, nothin’ more.  _

Milton and Stern traded looks again. They were thrown, a little; Arthur could see it in their eyes. He hid a toothy smile, pleased with himself. 

“We have some questions for you, Mister… Van der Linde,” Milton finally said. He was the ringleader, then. Stern seemed content enough to bob along in Milton’s wake. “Concerning your employer, and your whereabouts this weekend past.” 

The way Milton had said Arthur’s name, the hesitance over it, made unease writhe in Arthur’s belly and twist up into a stone. He did his best to ignore it. 

“You said you had some questions, yeah,” Arthur said. He kept his face flat and his tone even. The window behind Milton’s head, one of the ones shining into the living room, was cracked. Arthur didn’t have to guess who was on the other side. “You gonna ask ‘em, then?”

The corner of Milton’s mouth pulled down almost imperceptibly. “Where have you been this past week, Mister Van der Linde? We’ve been looking for you.”

“Been campin’,” Arthur said, settling back in his chair. 

“Where?”

“North.” 

Milton’s scowl deepend. “Where,  _ specifically _ ?” he asked, and that was how Arthur knew that Milton had questioned some of the other boys. He fought down another broad, toothy grin. Dutch’s Boys, as a rule, weren’t kind to law enforcement, especially not federals. With Hosea at the helm Arthur doubted that anybody’d said or done anything that could’ve gotten them arrested, but all of Dutch’s folk knew how to talk a cop around themselves into knots. It sounded like poor Agent Milton had questioned some of the others and had been stonewalled into the new century.

“Black Hills National Forest,” Arthur said. “South Dakota.” 

“And you’ve been there this whole time?” Milton asked, sharp-eyed. 

Arthur shrugged again and folded his hands across his belly, ignoring the way moving pulled at his wounded shoulder. “Got back a few hours ago,” he said, avoiding the question neatly. 

“I don’t see an ar-vee, Mister Van der Linde.” 

“Ain’t need one,” Arthur replied. He gestured with his chin out to the fields, where the horses were grazing in the late afternoon sun. “We took a couple’a horses in that trailer, there. Rode ‘round an’ camped in the backcountry.” 

“We?” said Agent Stern, pouncing on the pronoun. They’d already seen Charles inside, though, so there wasn’t anything Arthur could do about that. 

“Me an’ a good friend’a mine,” Arthur said. “Ain’t no fun campin’ up there alone. You’re as like to get eaten by a cougar as not.”

“Which horses did you take?” said Milton, looking out at the field too. “One of the big ones?” He said it casually, like it didn’t matter at all, but Arthur could smell a trap when it was smeared with shit and laid out in front of him. Milton was trying to catch Arthur in a lie. 

“Naw,” Arthur said. “We took Falmouth and Taima. Smaller horses. They’re in the barn gettin’ some high-quality feed an’ rest away from the others. That little brindle bastard out in the field there’s a greedy menace.” 

“Good camping up in the Black Hills?” Milton asked, changing tact. 

Arthur shrugged again. “Decent,” he said. He’d been through the Black Hills before. The backcountry was empty enough, but some of the frontcountry sites were always packed to the gills with tourists. “Kinda crowded, though.”

“What made you decide to head up this week?” 

Arthur made a show of blinking, as if he found the question more than a little strange. “Me an’ my friend both got the week off work,” Arthur said. “Seemed as good a week as any. Why?” He changed his tone, flavoring with a little falsified concern. “Has something happened?” 

Milton scowled even harder, but Arthur could tell that Agent Stern had half-bought Arthur’s act. 

“Mister Van der Linde,” Stern said, leaning forward in his chair, “what do you know about the Lemoyne Raiders?”

Arthur made a further show of frowning and scratching the scar on his chin. “The Lemoyne Raiders? They were a biker gang down in Rhodes ‘bout five, ten years back. Mean bastards.”

“ _ Were  _ a biker gang?” 

Arthur nodded. “Yeah, like I said, ‘bout five, ten years ago.”

“Mister Van der Linde,” Stern said, shifting in his seat and flashing Milton another look, “the Raiders never disbanded. They’re still active.” 

Arthur’s eyebrows shot up. “Are they really? Huh. I ain’t heard nothin’ from ‘em. Their clubhouse in Rhodes’s been turned into a gun store’r somethin’. Figured they must’ve broken up an’ drifted apart years ago.” 

“You’ve been in Rhodes recently?” Milton said, pouncing on that with a hungry gleam in his eye.

“Yeah,” Arthur said. “Last time was prob’ly… three weeks ago?”

“What were you doing in Rhodes?”

“Workin’,” said Arthur. “Runnin’ deliveries--I work for Lost Country, Ell-Ell-Cee. Coffee shop an’ brew house down in Valentine. Up ‘til recently I was on the morin’ shift an’ ran most of the deliveries. I ain’t too sociable before noon, y’see.” 

“We know all that,” said Stern helpfully, but MIlton only growled. 

Arthur knew he had to tread carefully, now. He looked between Milton and Stern, letting his brow furrow, mouth pulling down to let concern spill across his face. “Wait,” said Arthur, slowly. “Are you sayin’--what’s happened with the Raiders? Are they still runnin’ ‘round? Did they hurt somebody? I dunno who was s’posed to run deliveries this week, but I can call Hosea if you need me to--”

“No newspapers up in the Black Hills, huh?” said Milton, waspishly. 

Arthur stared at him, playing stupid. Arthur was pretty good at playing stupid. 

It was Stern who broke again, and Arthur knew he’d won the man over. Stern believed that Arthur’d been out camping all week, that Arthur had no idea what was going on, that Arthur was just some idiot who slung coffee and beer and ran deliveries when he was told to. 

_ Score one for me,  _ Arthur thought. He was sure that Hosea and the others had laid the groundwork, of course, had played it off like Arthur was the big lunk of the family, good for bouncing on the weekends and hauling shit around but not much else. 

“There was an... incident in Lemoyne last Saturday,” Stern explained. 

“In Rhodes?” Arthur asked, just to further the lie a little bit.

Stern shook his head. “Farther south,” he said. “Just outside Saint Denis, actually. The Lemoyne Raiders haven’t ever disbanded. They just moved. On Saturday their clubhouse was raided. Hit pretty hard. Seven Raiders were killed.” 

Arthur whistled. “ _ Seven? _ ” he said, carefully skirting around the fact that Arthur’d probably killed at least a few of those seven himself. “That ain’t no clubhouse raid, Agent Stern, that’s outright warfare. Who’d the Raiders piss off so bad?” 

“That’s the thing, Mister Van der Linde,” Milton interrupted, leaning forward. “We’ve talked to a few of the Raiders, and they’re pointing their fingers at  _ you. _ ” 

Arthur laughed outright. He had to. He knew that Milton was lying. No Raider, not even an O’Driscoll-turned-Raider, would go squeaking to the feds. The Raiders were real outlaws. No outlaw biker snitched, not even for promises of reduced time or lighter charges. There were too many outlaws doing hard time inside who’d kill a snitch, even if that snitch was outside their own club. 

“I’m sure they are,” Arthur said instead, playing along. “The Raiders ain’t never liked us much. ‘S all bullshit, though. I thought the Raiders’d all disbanded years ago, an’ we’ve never beefed with the Raiders over turf. Jus’ politics.” 

“Why is that?” Milton asked. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “The Raiders’re a bunch’a racists,” Arthur explained, patiently. “Or at least they were back in the eighties, an’ even if they’re still hangin’ ‘round in Lemoyne, I cain’t believe they’d change their politics quite so, uh. Drastically. An’ they ain’t ever liked us much. They were one-percenters an’ we weren’t--there’s some bad blood there.”

“Mister Van der Linde, are you claiming that your motorcycle club is law-abiding?”

“When we were runnin’, we were,” Arthur lied. “There were a few, uh, dust-ups, ‘tween us an’ some other boys, but we weren’t gangbangin’ or nothin’.”

“I find that hard to believe,” said Milton, flatly.

Arthur shrugged. Whether or not Milton believed him wasn’t Arthur’s problem. He just had to make it out of this interaction without incriminating himself or any of the other boys. 

“So, what, your story is that the Raiders saw you all down in Rhodes running deliveries and decided to revive an old blood feud for no reason?”

“Pretty much,” said Arthur, because that was exactly what had happened. “Though it ain’t much of a feud, since we didn’t know that the Raiders were still up an’ runnin’.”

“What do you know about the Raiders’ operation?” Stern swept in, cutting off another angry retort from Milton. “You say they’re one-percenters?”

“They claim t’be, at least,” said Arthur. He wasn’t a snitch either, and he wasn’t going to rat the Raiders out on the feds. That shit would come right back around and bite him in the ass. “Like I said, me an’ the rest of the club never really spent no time down there, when we were roamin’ around. Lemoyne’s kinda a shithole.” 

Stern chuckled, but Milton scowled. 

“So the fact that last Saturday, you, Mister Van der Linde the elder, Javier Escuella and Marion Williamson were all out of town on the night that the Raiders got hit is just, what, a coincidence?” 

From inside the house, there was a muffled thump. Arthur nearly smiled, imagining Charles mouthing Bill’s real name,  _ Marion,  _ eyebrows going up with incredulity. 

“Well I cain’t speak as t’where everybody else was,” Arthur said. “I was gone by then, headed up north. Dutch’s got an old lady an’ Javier’s got a girlfriend over in West Elizabeth. He visits her all the time. I dunno what Bill was out doin’, but he ain’t too sociable, our Bill.” 

“None of you were down in Lemoyne on Saturday?” Milton pressed. 

Arthur shrugged, biting his cheek to hide his wince when his shoulder protested. “I dunno,” he repeated. “I ain’t memorized the delivery schedule or nothin’.”

Milton shook his head, angry now. “Bullshit,” he spat. 

Arthur eyed him. 

“I’ve talked to your friend John, you know,” Milton said, changing tact again. Arthur blinked, a bit thrown himself, but tried to recover. “John Marston? He looks like he went three rounds in the ring with Apollo Creed. You’re telling me that he wasn’t caught in some beef between your shitty biker gang and the Raiders?”

“Motorcycle club,” Arthur muttered, unable to stop himself, and made a show of rolling his eyes. “Marston’s a bouncer, Agent Milton. Usually it’s pretty safe ‘round here, but Valentine’s a livestock town. We get some rough boys through the bar every now’n again. ‘S why we get hazard pay when we spend a night bouncin’.” 

Stern was nodding, but Milton, oddly enough, wouldn’t let it go. His teeth were bared, his nostrils flared, like an angry bull about to charge. 

_ There’s somethin’ more here,  _ thought Arthur. Milton had some personal stake in this, and Arthur had no idea what that stake could be. He wracked his brain, trying to remember if he’d ever heard of Jim Milton before, but came up empty. 

_ What’s got him so invested?  _ Arthur wondered. 

“You are aware, Mister Van der Linde,” Milton began again, a vein bulging in his forehead, “that your… father, Daniel Van der Linde, sometimes known as Dutch, has been under investigation by the Eff-Bee-Eye for near-on fifteen years now, right?” 

“Is this about that hippie bullshit from back in the seventies?” Arthur said, ignoring the bait Milton had thrown out in front of him. “Dutch had some wild ideas back in those days, but it was nineteen seventy-four. We all had wild ideas.”

“Even you?” Milton asked. 

Arthur eyed him warily. “Even me,” he said. 

Milton leaned back in his Adirondack and sucked his teeth. “My agency didn’t open up a file on your father until nineteen eighty-two,” Milton said. “So as far as most of my people know, Daniel Van der Linde’s always had two sons, and picked up a third in eighty-three. But I’ve done a bit of digging,  _ Arthur. _ ” 

The emphasis on Arthur’s name put all of the hair on the back of Arthur’s neck straight up. He resisted the urge to twitch. To bolt. To tackle Agent Milton, and tangle them all in Milton’s web. 

“Statute of limitations on some of the shit we  _ know  _ Dutch got up to in the seventies and eighties is long up,” Milton continued. “We can’t pin any of that early shit on him, the larceny, the petty theft, the swindling, no matter how hard we’ve tried.

“But you know what doesn’t have a statute of limitations, Mister Van der Linde?” Milton asked, leaning forward. 

Arthur kept his mouth shut. 

_ Prob’ly should’a called a lawyer,  _ he thought. 

“Kidnapping,” said Milton. 

Arthur stared at him. “Kidnapping,” he repeated. 

“Kidnapping,” Milton agreed. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a slim manila folder, held shut by dull silver paper clips. Arthur eyed that folder like it was a live rattlesnake and Milton, sensing that he’d gotten the upper hand for the first time since he’d knocked on Arthur’s door, smiled with all of his teeth. 

“In nineteen seventy-three,” Milton said, opening the folder, “a thirteen-year-old boy disappeared from his foster home in Montana. It was the boy’s fifteenth foster home in two years, and his foster parents claimed to the state that he’d run away. He was never seen again.” 

“A cryin’ shame,” said Arthur, quietly. 

Milton’s smile sharpened. “Six months later, in nineteen seventy-four, one Daniel Van der Linde, a chronic vagrant and small-time thief, adopted a fourteen-year-old boy in Texas. His brother’s son, Van der Linde told the judge.” 

“My father took sick,” Arthur said. “Dutch--my uncle--took me in, rather than let me go to Children’s Services in Texas.”

“Here’s the thing, though,” Milton said. “Daniel Van der Linde didn’t have a brother.” 

“Sure he did.” Hosea and Dutch had drilled this into Arthur decades ago. Arthur hadn’t had to pull on any of it since he’d been adopted, but he still remembered. “Saul Van der Linde. Older than Dutch by a good few years. A half-brother, from Dutch’s daddy’s wild younger days. My dad an’ Dutch weren’t… weren’t close, but Dutch--”

Milton held up a hand. “I’m gonna stop you there, Mister Morgan,” he said. Arthur’s blood ran cold. 

“What?” Arthur asked, scrambling to come up with something, anything to say that would throw Milton off the scent. If Milton could prove that Arthur wasn’t who he said he was--that he was really Arthur Morgan, teenage runaway, and not Arthur Van der Linde, son of Dutch, well. 

Kidnapping carried a twenty-five year minimum sentence. Dutch wouldn’t survive hard time, not in the ways that mattered. 

“Who?” 

“Here’s the thing,” Milton said, smug as a cat who’d caught a little songbird and had it pinned beneath its claws. “We live in an amazing age, Mister Morgan. The internet? Shit, if you’d told me ten years ago that the whole world would be connected inside a little computer I could plop onto my desk, I’d call you crazy. But that’s the world we live in. And people don’t like it when kids go missing, you know? Some of the first shit we had uploaded into our database was information on missing kids.”

“So, what,” Arthur said slowly, shaking his head, “you think that ‘cause Dutch took me in after my daddy died in eighty-four that I’m really this… this Morgan kid from Montana?”

“Well, there’s the fact that there’s never been a Saul Van der Linde either.” Milton tapped his little manila folder. “Not a one, not one who’s had a Social Security number, anyway, or one who’s paid his taxes. It’s not a common last name, you see.” 

Arthur snorted, leaned into his own confidence. Agent Stern was looking back and forth between Milton, brow furrowed in confusion. 

“If I  _ was  _ this kidnapped kid,” Arthur drawled, “why didn’t I go runnin’ to the cops or somethin’? Dutch ain’t my  _ real  _ father, I’ll tell you that much, but that don’t mean he ain’t the father I want. He was a good uncle t’me when I was a kid, an’ he’s been a good father since.” 

Milton faltered a little. His smile faded. 

_ Ah,  _ thought Arthur.  _ You thought that you were gonna throw my name in my face an’ I was gonna fold like a house’a cards.  _

It was a good gambit, Arthur’d give Milton that. Nobody else had ever figured out Dutch’s bait-and-switch, the invention of a brother, the dubious claim of blood between him and Arthur. All of that had been a carefully-fabricated lie built to get the judge in Corpus Christi to allow the adoption. 

_ Milton thinks that, what, Dutch snatched me outta my foster father’s car?  _ Arthur snorted again, derisive. That last placement had lasted all of three days before Arthur’d cut and run, had packed up everything he owned into a battered blue backpack and hit the breeze. Dutch had been four states away drinking and gambling. Arthur’d run off all on his own. 

Milton fiddled with some papers for a minute, then came up with a photo. 

Arthur froze. 

The picture was old. Its edges were rumpled and over the years its color had faded to a near-uniform yellow. Despite all that, Arthur knew what the picture was. 

It was himself, twenty-three years ago. Twelve or thirteen, tiny and underfed, with enormous ears and enormous green eyes. 

_ Shit, I was blond back then,  _ Arthur thought. Shock had kicked him in the chest and made his fingertips numb. He couldn’t make his thoughts line up in any kind of order. 

The kid in the picture had a gap between his front teeth. His nose had been broken at least once. His eyes were sad and sullen. 

Milton, apparently tired of waiting for a reaction, leaned forward in his chair and held the picture up to Arthur’s face. Up close his pockmarked face shone with sweat, and anticipation flickered across his mouth. 

“Yeah,” Milton said softly, his beady eyes bright as coins. “I can see it now, Agent Stern, can’t you?”

Arthur held very still. Milton’s hands were shaking with excitement, and every time he twitched the photograph wavered, brushed against Arthur’s cheek soft as a caress. 

Agent Stern leaned in a little closer, squinting. “I… I dunno, Jim,” he said. “I mean, kinda? The eyes and the nose, maybe, but…” 

“There’s a lot’a green-eyed blond kids in America, Agent Milton,” said Arthur crisply. Twenty-three years had passed since that picture had been taken, and Arthur’d outgrown that boy he’d been. The ears and the eyes, the soft face, the cornsilk hair. Arthur was hard and coarse now. He was scarred and tired. 

“Mister Morgan, you know that if you cooperate with me, I can let you go scot-free, right?” said Milton. “All that shit you got up to in the seventies and eighties, I can make that go away. We don’t want  _ you.  _ We don’t even want Javier Esuella or John Marston. We just want Van der Linde.”

The thing was, after the shitshow in Lemoyne, Arthur was kind of tempted. The idea of a clean slate was tempting. What could Arthur do, without having to worry about RICO? What kind of man could he be if he didn’t have to worry about getting roped up in Dutch’s or Micah’s schemes? 

_ I ain’t no rat.  _ Getting shot wasn’t enough to change that. Arthur would die before he turned Dutch over to the feds. He’d die. 

“That’s a mighty nice offer, Agent Milton, but I still ain’t see the point,” Arthur said. He moved away from the picture that Milton still held up to Arthur’s face. “I’m sure that if I  _ was  _ part’a some--I dunno, criminal enterprise or one-percenter biker gang, I’d be more’n happy to take you up on your offer. But we ain’t a motorcycle gang, Agent Milton. We’re just a bunch’a old friends who happen to like motorcycles.” 

Milton’s face twisted into a snarl. “You’re making a mistake, Mister Morgan,” he growled. “We’re going to get Van der Linde, and when we do, we’re taking everybody with him.” 

“Listen, Agent,” Arthur said, making a show of leaning back in his own chair, blithe and unbothered, “tell you what. If Dutch goes mad with power or somethin’, starts gettin’ delusions of grandeur, you’ll be the first one I call, okay? But there ain’t nothin’ to rat Dutch out  _ on,  _ ‘cept maybe his shit-ass sense’a humor. An’ my name’s not Morgan, Agent Milton. It’s Van der Linde. I’m sorry to hear ‘bout that missin’ kid, but you’ve got the wrong feller.” 

Milton’s scowl twisted into something frightening and wild. Arthur tensed before he could help it, half-expecting Milton to fly off his chair and start swinging, but Agent Stern reached out, caught Milton’s elbow, grimaced at Arthur apologetically. 

“Mister Van der Linde, thank you for your time,” said Stern. “I, uh, apologize for my colleague, here. We’ve been--we’ve had a long few nights.”

“Ah, don’t worry ‘bout it,” said Arthur, waving Stern’s apology off like he wasn’t really bothered, even though his pulse was hammering in his throat.  _ Milton knows who I am. He found me. He knows.  _ “Agent Milton’s just doin’ his due diligence, ‘s all. You fellers have any more questions, you know where t’find me.” 

“We do,” Milton spat, but Agent Stern quelled Milton with a look. 

“Have a nice day now, Mister Van der Linde,” said Agent Stern, and he more or less hauled Milton off Arthur’s front porch, though Milton shook him off soon enough. Milton had overplayed his hand. He’d thought that as soon as he whipped out that photography, whipped out Arthur’s real name, that Arthur would fold up and give him Dutch. 

_ Slimy motherfucker,  _ Arthur thought, watching the two men climb back into their car, throw it in reverse, and begin to back out down the long, winding drive. 

Arthur stayed where he was until he was sure that they were well and truly gone. Shock froze his legs to his chair. He had no idea how Milton’d found Arthur’s old picture, how he had connected  _ Arthur Morgan  _ to  _ Arthur Van der Linde.  _

_ I gotta call Hosea,  _ he thought.  _ I gotta warn somebody.  _

A single, terrible thought crystallized in Arthur's head. 

_We've got a rat._ There wasn't any other explanation that Arthur could think of. Somebody had told Agent Milton that Arthur's adoption had, technically, been a kidnapping. Somebody'd spilled. 

_Somebody inside the club._ Arthur didn't go around advertising the fact that Dutch had lied for him, had forged papers, invented a brother, done all of that just to make sure that Arthur's adoption was legitimate. 

_Somebody's talkin', an' Hosea needs to be warned._

But he couldn’t move. 

The front door creaked open and Charles came out, padding across the porch to collapse into one of the now-empty chairs. 

“So,” he said. 

Arthur snorted. “So,” he replied. 

“How’d he figure you out?” Charles asked. He’d been listening at the window, after all; he’d heard Milton call Arthur by his name. 

“Dunno,” said Arthur dully, closing his eyes. Pain flared in his shoulder again, probably made worse by the adrenaline that had flooded Arthur’s body and now left him weak and shivery. “‘S keepin’ with the rest of this shitty week, it seems.” 

Charles snorted. “I’ll say,” he said. “You okay?”

Arthur shrugged. 

“You want me to call Hosea? Let him--let him know? Warn him or something?”

“Prob’ly should,” Arthur said. 

“Hey,” said Charles, and he kicked Arthur in the ankle. “Don’t go away on me.”

“What, like you do?” said Arthur waspishly, tired and hurt and cranky, and regretted it as soon as he said it. 

Charles was silent for a moment. They’d never really talked about how Charles got sometimes after a long haul, the distance to him, the anger. There hadn’t been time. Between the arguing and the frantic ride to Lemoyne and Arthur sleeping in various places around Charles’s aunt’s place, Arthur’d never asked Charles just what happened out on the road to drive Charles into that strange, distant place inside his own head. 

“That’s fair,” Charles finally said, in lieu of explaining. 

Arthur sighed. “No, it ain’t,” he said. “Sorry. I’m--a bit rattled, I guess.” 

“Sounds like you should be,” said Charles. “We just got back. You haven’t really had any time to… think about things. To rest.” 

“Doesn’t mean I get t’be an asshole,” Arthur mumbled. He dragged a hand down his face. “So. Sorry. If you ain’t wanna talk about it, we don’t have to. Your head’s your own.”

Charles was quiet for a little bit longer. “Maybe someday,” he said. “But not… not tonight. We’ve had enough long, serious talks for a little while, don’t you think?”

“An’ then some,” Arthur agreed. He’d done more talking to Charles in the last few days than he’d done to anyone else in his entire life. Arthur was just about out of words. He did have something else to say, though, and even though he didn’t want to say it, he had to. “But… Charles, I don’t think you should… hang ‘round, for a little while. With the feds sniffin’ ‘round…”

Charles grimaced, but he didn’t argue like Arthur thought he would. “No, you’re right,” he said. “I don’t  _ want  _ to be around, not if they’re gonna be popping up like weeds for the next few days. My boss’d kill me if he caught wind of it. If I go, though, are you gonna be okay?”

“I got shot, Charles, not turned inside out,” Arthur said. “I’ll manage. Can pressgang some of the folks from the shop into service, if I need help.”

Charles nodded. His expression was sad and pinched. It was Arthur’s turn to kick him in the ankle. “I ain’t upset,” Arthur told him. “I know you don’t wanna be around the… the wilder elements’a my life. The feds’ll be around for a week or two. I’ll call ya when I can, an’ then… an’ then you can come here, if you still wanna. You can move all your shit in an’ we can be, well. You can live with me.” 

Charles kicked Arthur back and huffed, though some of the worry in his face eased. “I still want to,” he said. “I just… I feel like I’m abandoning you.” 

“I’m a big boy,” Arthur said. “I can handle it. I doubt Agent Stern’ll let Agent Milton kick up too much of a fuss, an’ Hosea’ll keep everybody else in line. This’ll all blow over.” 

“If you’re sure,” said Charles doubtfully. 

“I’m sure,” Arthur said, firmly. He wasn’t, not really, but he  _ was  _ going to do whatever he had to do to wait out the feds. He wasn’t going to send Charles away forever. 

_ Dutch ain’t gonna like it,  _ Arthur thought, an idea beginning to form in the back of his mind.  _ But if he don’t wanna listen to me, that’s not my problem.  _

“What are you thinking?” Charles asked, studying Arthur’s face. 

Arthur smiled, grimly. “I’m thinkin’,” he said, “that’s it’s about time somebody told Dutch that there’s a leak in the ship.” 

Charles winced. “He’s not gonna like that,” Charles said. 

“No,” said Arthur, settling back into his chair to watch the sun set over the hills. “He’s not.” 

\---

Charles stayed the night, warm and comforting against Arthur’s back, then left for the morning with Ava’s phone number and a rough schedule of his next few weeks scrawled onto a napkin and pinned to Arthur’s fridge. 

Charles took Arthur to Lost Country and left him in the parking lot. Arthur wasn’t sure where his bike had ended up after the fiasco in Lemoyne, but even if he’d had it with him he wouldn’t have been able to ride it. His fingers worked, mostly, but his hand was weak and moving his arm made pain flash white and red behind his eyes. 

So Charles dropped Arthur off and went on his way, and Arthur opened up Lost Country’s back door and slipped in through the kitchen. 

The man he’d wanted to see was there already, standing in front of his closed office door, scrutinizing the schedule Hosea always tacked up there. 

Arthur cleared his throat, and Dutch turned around. 

“Arthur,” Dutch said, expression cracking open into raw, naked relief. He strode across the kitchen in three long steps and folded Arthur into a crushing hug. Arthur huffed, pained, but let Dutch hug him. Dutch’s relief was genuine. Arthur could feel it in the way Dutch’s arms shook. 

“You’re alright,” Dutch finally said, hoarsely, pulling back enough to look Arthur up and down. Dutch looked pretty worn himself, frazzled and frayed, his hair rumpled, his beard overgrown, hollows sunk underneath his eyes. There was grey in his beard that Arthur had never noticed before. 

_ Maybe that’s why he shaves it off,  _ Arthur thought, letting Dutch inspect him patiently.  _ So we can’t so how old he’s gettin’.  _

“‘M alright,” Arthur agreed. “On the mend, even. Charles took good care’a me.”

“What happened?” Dutch pressed, his grip tight on Arthur’s arms. “Last I saw you, you were runnin’ off through the water, yellin’ your fool head off. I thought--well. I wasn’t sure…” 

“Ol’ Trelawny found me,” said Arthur gruffly, instead of telling Dutch that Arthur’d thought the same, that he’d run off convinced he would never see Dutch again, not in this life. “I guess Hosea had him out in the swamps lookin’ for us. He scooped me up an’ took me to Charles, up in Wichita. Charles took me north, an’ I stayed there for a few days.” 

“We heard,” Dutch said. “Charles called Hosea a few days back, said that you were awake and probably weren’t gonna die. Called us again last night, told us you’d made it back in and you’d talked to some federals.” 

Arthur managed a thin smile. “Prob’ly not gonna die from this, no,” he said, using his good hand to indicate his bad. He skirted the issue of the federal agents, at least for now. “I oughta live. Jus’ gonna be a little stiffer than before. How’s John?”

“He’s gonna live too,” Dutch assured Arthur. “The doctor in Valentine looked him over for us. Said John’s gonna have a hell of a headache for a while, maybe some trouble balacnin’, but he’ll be alright, with time.” 

“An’ the others? Anybody else get hurt?” 

“Javier got out clean,” Dutch said. “Bill got grazed along his hip, but the cut was clean enough. I fell,” Dutch said. He touched the side of his head, whatever injury he’d taken hidden underneath his hair. “Knocked myself around real good, I’m told.” 

“You don’t remember?” Arthur asked, concern spiking through him. Head injuries were nothing to laugh at--a man who took a bad blow to the head could feel the effects of it years later. 

“Not much after--well. After you and I parted ways,” Dutch said. “We did an awful lot of runnin’, I remember that much, and a fair bit of fallin’ over in the mud and the water, but the details… no, I don’t remember.” He shook his head. “Bill got us all into the truck, peeled outta there like a bat outta hell. By the time we made it back to Dewberry Creek I was steady enough to ride. We slung your bike in the back of the truck and lit outta there. Your bike’s at Hosea’s place, when you’re well enough to ride again.”

“An’ the truck?” Arthur asked. They’d boosted that truck. He didn’t want it lying around for the feds to find. 

“Sunk into that old tar pit south of Cumberland,” Dutch said. “Bill striped the vin and everythin’ before it went in.”

Arthur nodded. “‘S good,” he said. “I’m--I’m glad everybody made it out okay. More’r less, anyway. You get anybody to look at your head?”

“Doctor in Valentine,” Dutch said. “Told him I’d taken a spill here at the bar. Said he didn’t think nothin’ was fractured. The headache cleared up after a few days. I’m fine, Arthur. John’s fine. You’re gonna be fine. We’re all fine.” 

Arthur let out a big breath, relieved. He hadn’t called in because he’d been afraid that the feds were listening. He hadn’t wanted to give anything away or give the FBI any more ammunition to use against Dutch and the folks at Lost Country. 

It was a relief to hear that Arthur’s gambit in the bayous of Lemoyne had paid off. John was okay. Dutch was okay. Bill and Javier had made it out too. 

“Feds did come to my door last night,” said Arthur, scratching his chin. Dutch let him go at last, though he kept looking at Arthur like he thought Arthur might be half a ghost. 

Dutch’s lip curled. “Milton? Tall, ugly asshole?”

Arthur nodded. “What’d you do to that feller, Dutch? He hates you somethin’ fierce. Hates you enough to go diggin’. He knows you didn’t have a brother, Dutch. He knows who I am.”

Dutch shrugged. “I have no idea what I did to Milton,” he said, and Arthur was pretty sure that Dutch was telling the truth. “He’s got some kinda stick up his ass about me, about  _ us,  _ but I can’t recall ever crossin’ paths with him before. Neither can Hosea.” 

“Great,” Arthur muttered. “Another fuckin’ mystery.”

Dutch shot him a strange look. “What d’you mean, son?” he asked. 

Arthur waved a hand. “There’s somethin’ about all’a this that don’t add up,” he explained. “How’d the Raiders know where to hit John? How many O’Driscolls are still runnin’ around, and why’d they come for me? How’d the feds know to point the finger at us so fast for what went down in Lemoyne? How’d Milton know who I am? Arthur Morgan’s been missin’ for twenty-two years, from a completely different state. How’d Milton know where to look? How’d he even know to look at all?” 

“A mystery?” Dutch asked, incredulous. “I don’t know, Arthur, I don’t think there’s much mystery too it. It’s just been--we’ve had a bad run, is all. A little bad luck.” 

Arthur stared at him. “Javier breakin’ his arm last year was bad luck,” Arthur said. “Davey an’ Mac dyin’, years back,  _ that  _ was bad luck. Hell, my damn horse goin’ lame in one leg was bad luck.  _ This? _ ” He swept his good hand out. “This was more’n that, Dutch.” 

“What, are you sayin’ we’ve got a rat?” Dutch scoffed. 

“Yes,” said Arthur. 

He’d been thinking about it, these last few days. Turning the problem over and over in his head. He hadn’t had much else to do besides sleep and think, after all. 

Somebody’d tipped the Raiders off. Somebody’d tipped off the feds, too. All of this--the O’Driscoll burning Arthur’s barn, the Raiders snatching John, the firefight, the immediate swarm of federal agents all over Valentine, Agent Jim Milton’s rabid and intense hatred of Dutch, it couldn’t all be a coincidence.

None of it made any damn  _ sense.  _ Not until Arthur’d realized that, for all of the pieces to fit, there had to be somebody on the inside feeding information out. Somebody had called the FBI and told them that Dutch’s Boys were riding down to Lemoyne to settle a beef with the Raiders. Until somebody had told Milton that Dutch’s eldest son wasn’t Dutch’s son at all. 

Somebody had snitched. 

“Arthur, you’re not serious,” Dutch said, disbelieving. 

Arthur just looked at him, jaw set. 

“Arthur, these people-- _ our  _ people--they’re your brothers and sisters. Your family. You’re sayin’ that one of them went runnin’ to the cops? One of  _ our  _ people?” 

“I’m sayin’, Dutch, that it’s awful convenient that we’ve only jus’ started to have problems now,” Arthur said. “Six years’a peace an’ quiet.  _ Six.  _ An’ now we cain’t go a week without somebody gettin’ picked up by a rival club or somebody gettin’ tossed into jail. We’ve got Ay-Tee-Eff in the bar, Eff-Bee-Eye in the streets. Somethin’s up, Dutch, an’ the easiest explanation--” 

“I didn’t think that I had raised you to reach the easiest explanation and quit there, Arthur,” Dutch said, and his tone was as gold as an Alaskan winter, was miles and miles of black ice. Arthur wanted to cringe, wanted to curl up away from that awful coldness, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. 

_ Somebody’s gotta warn him.  _

“Dutch,” Arthur said, fighting to keep his own voice from rising, “did Micah ever go over to Strawberry for his bail hearing?” 

Dutch blinked. “What?”

“His bail hearing,” Arthur clarified. “From--well, must’a been a month ago, now. From when he got pinched in Strawberry for brawlin’, jus’ before we started slingin’ moonshine under the table. I went, paid his bond, an’ the deputy gave him a date for his bail hearing. Micah ever go?”

“Well, I--no, I don’t think so,” Dutch said, mouth pulling down into a deep, confused frown. 

“Any cops ever come here lookin’ for him?”

Dutch’s expression changed like a flash of lightning, confusion shifting to fury in less that a heartbeat. “Really, Arthur?” Dutch hissed. “One thing goes wrong an’ the first thing you do is blame  _ Micah?  _ Accuse him of bein’--of bein’ a rat? A coward?”

“An’ worse,” Arthur said, darkly. “He used his brother’s name in Strawberry, Dutch. If he didn’t go to his bail hearing, the cops ain’t stupid. They’d know where to look. The fact that they ain’t come to arrest him oughta speak for itself, I think.”

“You’re--you almost died,” Dutch said, still half-growling, though he managed to calm himself down with visible effort. “You’re hurtin’, Arthur, that’s all. Lookin’ for--lookin’ for somebody to blame. It was just shit luck, that’s all. We were bound to run into some eventually.” 

Arthur could see, then, that Dutch would not be swayed. He wouldn’t believe Arthur. He wouldn’t even consider the possibility that Micah’d turned rat. 

And if Dutch wouldn’t even think about it, well. 

Jim Milton would have what he wanted, sooner or later. 

“You’re hurtin’,” Dutch repeated. His dark eyes were wild, like Dutch could make it true if he said it forcefully enough. “And that’s--that’s okay, Arthur. You take a few days off work, focus on gettin’ well, and--and you’ll come around. It was just bad luck.” 

Arthur had to close his eyes. Pain twisted in his belly, white-hot and raw, festering like a wound gone to rot. 

_ Dutch doesn’t believe me.  _

Twenty-two years Arthur’d been with Dutch. Two decades. Arthur had ridden at Dutch’s side for hundreds of thousands of miles. Dutch had been there for Arthur at Arthur's worst. Dutch had taught Arthur how to read. Dutch had held Arthur’s son. 

_ He doesn’t trust me.  _

“Okay, Dutch,” said Arthur, the words hollow in his mouth. “A few days. Sure.” 

Relief crossed Dutch’s face again, even stronger than it had been when Dutch had seen that Arthur was alive. Arthur wanted to scream. A knife dug its way through his ribcage. 

_ Arthur’s fallin’ in line,  _ Dutch was thinking. Arthur could see it across that face he loved so much as plain as day. 

“Go home, son,” Dutch advised, gently. “One’a the boys can take you. We’ll call you when you’re good to come in, okay?” 

“Okay,” Arthur agreed, heartbroken and trying to hide it. “Sure,” he repeated. 

Dutch smiled and said something else, something meaningless, the words lost to a roar of white noise in Arthur’s ears. Arthur nodded along. He played Dutch just like he’d played Milton, like he’d played Agent Stern, played obliging and obedient and more than a little stupid. 

He didn’t know what else to do. If he argued any more with Dutch he’d start yelling his head off, and that wouldn’t get Arthur anywhere. 

_ Dutch doesn't believe me. He doesn't believe me. _

Arthur let Dutch shoo him out of the kitchen, steer him towards the parking lot, call for somebody--Arthur didn’t hear who--to come out back and give Arthur a ride. 

Arthur stood there in the parking lot and tried not to lose his mind. He didn’t know how long he stood there for, blind and deaf and aching, until a hand touched his elbow and Arthur tossed his elbow back into the gut of whoever’d laid hands on him. 

“Fuckin’  _ ouch, _ ” snapped John, and Arthur turned around.

“You’re in a fuckin' mood,” John said, holding a hand out. “An’ I ain’t even opened my mouth yet.” Arthur eyed him.

John looked awful. Arthur’d probably come closer to dying, what with the near-drowning and bleeding all over the state of Lemoyne, but of the two of them John was the one who looked half-dead. 

A week of rest and care had softened some of John’s bruises, had brought the swelling down around his nose and his eye and his mouth, but the cuts on his face were still red and raw, new scars creasing the old, and the bruises around his eyes had only just started to fade from blue-black to blue-green, the edges mottled yellow and purple. 

John held himself stiffly, too. His hand and all its broken fingers were swathed in bandages and splints. Somebody, probably Abigail, had cut John’s stringy hair, probably to stitch up one of the cuts near his hairline, and without his tangled, greasy mane half-hiding his face, John looked very young. 

“Marston,” Arthur grunted. He still hadn’t forgiven John for dragging Isaac up in the middle of a fight, despite the fact that Arthur’d quite happily gone down to Lemoyne to die in John’s place, if he’d needed to. He was glad that he hadn’t needed to, that he and John had both made it out alive, but he still hadn’t forgiven John. 

John hadn’t actually apologized either, now that Arthur thought about it. 

This John, beaten and young, was different from the one who’d yelled at Arthur in Dutch’s backyard, though, and this John had also thrown himself at a pack of armed men in order to give Lenny time to escape, so even though he was still pissed, Arthur could feel a hard knot in his chest softening. 

_ Johnny’s always been able to do that,  _ he thought, grudgingly. It was devilishly hard to stay mad at John for too long, though Arthur’d managed it more or less fine in the months since John’d come creeping back into Lost Country. 

The problem was that despite how many times John had made Arthur angry enough to spit fire, he’d looked out for Arthur just as many times. Helped Arthur out of a tight spot or taken Arthur off riding to help clear his head, got up to stupid shit to make Arthur laugh, offered him a shoulder to lean on or a bottle to drink from. He’d looked after Arthur’s horses and had helped build Arthur’s fence. He’d had Arthur’s back more times than Arthur could count, and if it had been Arthur who’d been snatched off the road in Lemoyne, Arthur knew that John would’ve come to get him, would’ve killed and died to bring him back, just as Arthur had for John.

Now, standing here in the parking lot with Dutch's denials and dismissals ringing in his ears, Arthur was starting to realize that he valued John's loyalty more than Dutch's.

Arthur met John’s eyes, steadily. John’s eyes were dark like Dutch’s. Expressive, thoughtful whenever John actually bothered to stop and think. He was thinking now, a pensive expression across his battered face, and while Arthur watched him John heaved a great sigh.

“Arthur,” John said. “I’m--thank you,” he said. 

Arthur grunted. “Weren’t nothin’,” he muttered. 

“No,” John pressed, taking a step in so Arthur couldn’t look away. “I mean it, Arthur. Thank you. For--for goin’ after me. And--and for lookin’ after… After Abigail an’ Jack, while I was--gone.” 

Arthur blinked, surprised. 

“You didn’t have to do all that,” John continued, words coming out thick and fast, like John was worried that if he said them too slowly they’d get caught in his throat and never make it out. “You didn’t. You coulda left me in Lemoyne. I woulda deserved it, for what I said. An’ you didn’t have to take care of Abigail an’ the boy while I was… out runnin’ around.”

“‘Course I did,” said Arthur gruffly. 

“You didn’t,” John insisted. “It weren’t your responsibility. But,” he added hastily, as Arthur opened his mouth to argue, “you stepped up anyway, both with--with Jack an’ Abigail, an’ last week in Lemoyne. I woulda died without you, Arthur.” 

Arthur snorted. “Bill an’ Dutch an’ Javier were there too,” he said. “One’a them woulda gotten you out. Dutch  _ did-- _ he carried you when I fell.” 

“But you carried me first,” John said. “I remember, Arthur.” John broke eye contact and looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess what I mean to say is--well. I ain’t been a… very good person, lately. Been a shit father, a shit friend, a shit partner. A shit son, too--Hosea’s been givin’ me an earful, let me tell ya.” 

Arthur smiled a bit at that. Even though John had Dutch’s coloring, dark hair and dark eyes, a set to his mouth so stubborn it was almost pulled straight from Dutch’s face, Arthur could see Hosea in him. Hosea’s cleverness, Hosea’s care, Hosea’s sense of duty. 

Sometimes, Arthur thought that he’d inherited too much of Dutch and not enough of Hosea; Arthur was the inverse of John, blond and pale-eyed like Hosea but with Dutch’s fire and fury at his heart. 

_ ‘S good to see that the old man’s taught John somethin’, at least,  _ Arthur thought. 

“So I’m tryin’ to say--sorry, I guess,” said John. He darted a quick look at Arthur’s face, then looked away again, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Arthur. For bein’ an asshole at Dutch’s, an’ for runnin’ out on everybody. For bein’--I dunno, an idiot.” 

Arthur let John stand there for a minute, but that hard tangled knot in Arthur’s chest had softened enough to unwind, so Arthur just shook his head and said, roughly, “We’re all kinda idiots, Johnny. You ain’t the only who’s been actin’ a fool. An’ I, uh. Ain’t exactly been makin’ you feel welcome or nothin’.” 

John’s mouth twisted, half a smile, half a grimace. “Still,” he said. 

Arthur acknowledged the point. “Still,” he agreed. 

They stood there in uncomfortable silence for a moment, their whole fifteen-year history stretched between them, and then Arthur did what older brothers ought to do and scruffed John, gently, by the back of the neck.

“You’re alright, kid,” he rumbled. John hissed when Arthur’s fingers brushed a bruise or two, but he took his scruffing like a man. 

“You gonna do better by that boy?” Arthur asked, letting John go. John rubbed the back of his neck again, but nodded. His eyes were hard and determined. 

“I am,” he said. “Abigail, too. I’ve been… well. There ain’t much else to think about while you’re gettin’ your ass beat, aside from how fuck ugly most’a the Lemoyne Raiders are.”

Arthur snorted. 

“Arthur,” John said, anxious again. “I’m probably gonna… I’m probably gonna leave.” 

Arthur didn’t react. 

“Gonna take Abigail an’ Jack with me, too,” John continued, rushing on again. “I know I shouldn’t, I know there’s loyalty an’ all that to consider, but I--”

“No,” said Arthur, softly. He took his eyes off John and looked around them, looked at the dusty horizon, the cracked asphalt parking lot, the highway. “No, John, you should leave. You an’ your woman, an’ your son. It’s… I dunno,” he said, shrugging, as John’s eyes grew wide and round as saucers. “I think it’s all over an’ done with here, John. Dutch’s Boys, I mean. There’s… Dutch ain’t gonna quit,” he said. 

John listened, expression hardening. 

“He’s set himself on this path, on this idea’a gettin’ the club up an’ runnin’ again, really runnin’, an’ it’s just. There ain’t no place for it no more,” Arthur said. His heart twisted even as he said it, but it was true, and he knew it. John knew it. 

“Those days’re done with,” Arthur said quietly. “Or maybe I’m done with them, I dunno. But I--I  _ like  _ the life we’ve got here. That I’ve got here. The horses, my house, the coffee shop. Throwin’ gunrunnin’ an’ shit into it’s jus’ gonna ruin shit, an’ I don’t want--I don’t wanna ruin my life.” 

“It’s no way to raise a kid, that’s for damn sure,” said John, darkly. He shook his head. “I dunno, Arthur. Do you ever think… you ever think that maybe it wasn’t such a good thing, Dutch an’ Hosea pickin’ us up like they did?” 

Arthur thought about Agent Milton sitting on his front porch holding a photograph up to Arthur’s face. 

“That I don’t regret,” he said. “Goin’ with Dutch an’ Hosea. Stayin’ with them. They’re fine men, John. But I ain’t keen on openin’ up a chapter of our lives that’s already closed, y’know? An’ I ain’t… I ain’t too keen to die for no high-minded ideals no more, either.” 

John actually smiled then, really smiled, and he was suddenly Arthur’s mischievous little brother again, clever and bright and wickedly funny. “Caramel Sauce Guy’s good for ya, ain’t he?” 

Arthur shrugged and scratched his chin, a little embarrassed. He'd last seen Charles less than an hour ago, and missed him intensely already. “Yeah,” he said. “He is, I think.”

John clapped Arthur on his good shoulder. “Let’s make a deal, then,” said John. “When you want out, you tell me,” he said. “An’ I’ll make sure you get out.” 

Arthur looked John up and down. “Same for me,” he said. “You an’ your family need somewhere to go, you call me.”

“You’re my brother,” said John, firmly. “I ain’t always acted like it, but you are, an’ I’m grateful to ya, for everythin’ you’ve done.” 

“Enough’a that, now,” said Arthur gruffly, elbowing John. “Let’s not get too tender over here, a’right?”

“Alright,” said John, amused now. He let Arthur go and fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, proffered one to Arthur. “Smoke?”

Arthur took the cigarette. “Sure,” he said. He let John light him up and they smoked there together in the parking lot, and despite the curling smoke and the dust and the smell of cow shit on the wind, the air between Arthur and John was clearer than it had been in months. 

\---

It took Arthur another three weeks to get any real use out of his left hand. The pain didn’t go away, not entirely, but it came and went in stops and starts. The wound stayed closed. Scar tissue formed, puckered and red, and softened to a faint, shiny pink. 

With only one hand there wasn’t much Arthur could do around the coffee shop or the house. He went into the shop a few times to mind the register and keep the feds from getting suspicious while some of the others did other work, bouncing or running deliveries or whatever else needed doing. He fed his chickens and cared for his horses and took a lot of long, aimless walks through the fields around his horse, a dog or two running a head and usually a horse tagging along just behind his shoulder. 

The horses had seemed to take Arthur’s injury as a personal affront. He could hardly take a step outside his own front door without the horses crowding around the paddock fences and watching him like long-faced hawks, ready to leap over the fence and chase off anybody or anything who got too near Arthur without their consent. 

Arthur hadn’t really ever wondered what foals born to a whole herd felt like, their every move scrutinized and watched over by what amounted to nervous, walking couches, but he certainly knew what foals felt like now. 

Rooster in particular was obnoxious. He despised letting Arthur out of his sight and whinnied furiously any time Arthur ducked into the barn or went around a corner Rooster couldn’t see, stamping and snorting and making all kinds of noise until Arthur came back into sight again. 

While it was annoying to have to work around an overbearing, nine-hundred pound animal, Arthur was a little bit touched by Rooster’s devotion, if he was being honest. He hadn’t thought that the wily stallion cared that much. 

Buell still seemed to openly despise Arthur’s presence, though, so not everything had changed. That was comforting in and of itself. 

Even more obnoxious than the horses’ mothering was the treatment Arthur got from the rest of his friends; those that didn’t fuss over Arthur like he’d shatter into pieces in a strong wind (Missus Grimshaw, Mary-Beth and Kieran, of all people) either gave Arthur too much space or not enough, alternately clearing a path for him whenever he walked into the bar or pressing up against his side like frightened puppies. 

Arthur tolerated it as best as he was able. Something was changing in Lost Country, and everybody could feel it. Lines were being drawn and sides were forming. On one side was Dutch and Micah and Bill. Javier was drifting that way too, Sean following, a few of the women wobbling on the metaphorical fence. 

On the other side was John, who grew more pensive and withdrawn by the day, and Sadie, who’d never been considered one of the boys anyway. 

Nobody seemed to know yet where Arthur stood. Nobody seemed to know why exactly sides were being taken, either, but that didn’t stop people from taking sides. The politics of the bar--the  _ club _ , because that’s what it still was, really--were shifting, and most people seemed to think that Arthur’d taken up a spot in the middle. 

Arthur hadn’t. He’d picked his side. John knew it. Sadie knew it too, because she knew Arthur. But the rest of the crew hadn’t figured it out yet. Arthur let them sit in the dark and wonder. He avoided the shop on his off-hours, too, once his shoulder’d healed up enough to let him ride his bike again, though he still had to keep his bad arm braced against his stomach. The person he really wanted to talk to, Hosea, was never in the shop at the same time. Dutch and Hosea were trying to stay out of Lost Country as much as possible, to give the feds too many targets to watch to cover everyone effectively. It was a good strategy, but it meant that the one person whose advice Arthur really needed wasn't around to offer it. 

(Well, one of two people whose advice Arthur needed. He missed Charles so badly it hurt, some nights, and had to roll over to stop himself from going over to the phone and calling Charles back before the feds left.) 

To stave off boredom and loneliness, and to stop himself from twisting himself into knots going back and forth on a decision he'd already made, Arthur spent most of his time sketching or sleeping out in the field with the horses. He liked listening to the horses bicker and argue. Horse politics were easier to follow and the human kind. 

Charles stayed away that whole time, listening to Arthur’s request, which Arthur was grateful for. Falmouth and Taima were good horses, and integrated into the herd of Arthur’s rescues without too much trouble. Taima tried to take Lyra’s spot as the boss mare, but Lyra, who knew herself to be capable of killing a man, refused to be intimidated and managed to keep her crown. 

Falmouth, Arthur suspected, was just happy to have friends. 

Finally, nearly four weeks after Arthur’d been shot, he got the all-clear from Hosea. The FBI had been reassigned. Something about a shooting out in California, Hosea’d said. Jim Milton was leaving empty-handed, without Dutch in handcuffs in the back of his car. Apparently, Milton had been pretty pissed about it, too. Had caused a big ruckus at Smithfield's.

Arthur whooped, delighted--aside from trying to get Arthur to roll over on Dutch, Milton's strategy for catching them all had been to be as annoying and inconvenient as possible, turning up at every street corner like a bad penny-- and called Charles to tell him that the coast was clear, then got on his bike and drove down to Lost Country. 

He made pretty good time, despite being one-handed still. 

“Arthur,” Hosea said, lifting a tired hand in greeting. He’d come outside as soon as he’d heard Arthur’s bike rumble up, closing the shop door behind him, and Arthur cut his engine. 

“Old man,” he said, gently. 

The last four weeks hadn’t been kind to anybody, but they especially hadn’t been kind to Hosea. There were lines cut around Hosea’s mouth, his eyes, that hadn’t been there the last time Arthur’d seen him. Hosea looked ancient. He looked like was about two steps from his grave. 

“It’s good to see you, Arthur,” Hosea said. He searched Arthur’s face and apparently found Arthur well enough. “I was--I was worried about you.” 

“I know,” Arthur said, leaning across the bars of his bike. “An’ I’m sorry for that, Hosea. Weren’t my intention to worry you. An’ thank you, by the way. I don’t remember Trelawny grabbin’ me, but if you hadn’t had him out lookin’ I’d be gator bait by now.” 

“How’s the shoulder?” Hosea asked. 

“On the mend,” Arthur said. “How’re you?”

“Still livin’, at least,” Hosea reported. His mouth pulled up into a half-smile and took some of the desperate exhaustion off his face. “I’m glad you’re doing okay, Arthur. You had me worried there.” 

“Sorry,” Arthur repeated again, a little sheepish. “How’s… how’s things? How’s Dutch?”

Hosea just shook his head. 

Arthur winced. “That good, huh?” He hesitated, but pushed through. “Hosea, you know there’s a rat, right? Somebody tipped off the feds that we’d be down in Lemoyne.” 

Hosea had the audacity to scowl at Arthur, the cranky old bastard. Arthur's heart lifted to see it. 

“You think I don’t know that?” Hosea said. “There’s too many coincidences for anything else to make sense. You have any guesses?”

“Sounds like you’re ahead of me, old man,” Arthur said. “Three guesses.” 

Hosea’s scowl deepened. “I thought so,” he said. “Micah never did go into Strawberry for his bail hearing, did he?”

“Don’t think so.” 

Hosea spat. “Well, I tried to point that out to Dutch and got my damn head bitten off, so. I don’t know, Arthur. There’s… this might be the end of things, comin’ up here soon. Dutch’s stopped runnin’ any, uh, _ deliveries _ , for the time bein’, but that won’t last.” 

“No,” said Arthur, darkly. “I guess it won’t.”

Silence fell between Arthur and Hosea. 

Growing up, Arthur and Hosea had butted heads like cats and dogs. Dutch had been the one who let Arthur get away with anything. Hosea’d been the one to make sure Arthur ate, to make sure Arthur followed the rules and kept to his curfew and all of that tough, nitpicky shit that came with raising a kid. 

Arthur’d hated it at the time, had chafed under what he saw as yet another stranger play-acting at being Arthur’s father, but Hosea hadn’t been playing, Arthur knew that now. 

Hosea loved Arthur like Arthur was his own son. Hosea had always looked out for him. 

“Hosea,” Arthur said, throat tight. “You’re a good man, you know that? A good father. I’d be dead without you.” 

Hosea looked at Arthur, mustered up another tired smile. “Probably would be,” he admitted. He sighed. Not even Arthur going all soft on him could ease those lines around his eyes, it seemed. “What do you want, Arthur?”

“What, I can’t be nice t’you outta the goodness of my heart?”

Hosea glared. 

“Fine,” said Arthur, and blew out a big breath. He’d been thinking about this for weeks now. He’d rehearsed it in his head over and over and over again, said it to the horses and the chickens and his own reflection in the mirror. He hadn't said it to Charles yet, but he was going to say it when he saw Charles again. 

_ I can do this,  _ he thought.

“When this is all over an’ done with,” Arthur said, quietly, “I want out, Hosea.” 

Hosea didn’t say anything. 

“I mean really out,” Arthur pressed. “I’m gonna--I’m goin’ straight, Hosea. Goin’ honest. Well, as honest as I can go, anyway. I don’t want nothin’ to do with this anymore.” He swept a hand up to encompass Lost Country, its battered storefront, its back room packed with guns. 

“You been talkin’ to John?” Hosea asked. His blue eyes were unreadable. 

Arthur nodded. 

Hosea blew out a big breath of his own. “I was wondering,” he admitted, softly. “John asked me for an out last week. Him I understand. He’s got a woman, a child. But I wasn’t sure if you’d ever… Ever want to leave this life.” 

“I don’t wanna end up dead in a swamp somewhere, Hosea,” Arthur said. “I know I--I know I deserve it, prob’ly, with all the things I done, but I don’t--I don’t wanna die in the dark an’ leave Charles with the job of findin’ my body. Or  _ you  _ with that job, or Dutch, or anybody else. I wanna--” Arthur cut himself off. He wanted to  _ live.  _ He wanted to spend his days training horses and chasing chickens. He wanted to travel the whole country with Charles. 

He'd realized that sitting in Charles's aunt's shed, but even though weeks had gone by since then--since Arthur had even seen Charles's face--Arthur's wanting was no less true.

“Okay,” Hosea said. 

“I know I’m s’posed to be loyal, Hosea, but I jus’--wait, okay?”

Hosea cocked a fluffy white eyebrow. “Okay,” he repeated. “What, you think I was gonna fight you on it?”

“Uh, well, a little,” Arthur admitted. 

Hosea snorted. “You’re a good man too, Arthur,” he said. “I know you don’t believe it yet, but you are, and if you want out--if you want to make something of yourself, I’ll get you out. You deserve to know a few years of peace and happiness. I did, with Bessie.” 

“Oh,” said Arthur, a little lamely. He’d been prepared to argue with Hosea, to fight him on it, to have to talk him around. He hadn’t expected--this. This easy acceptance, and even the little bit of light that shone in Hosea’s eyes. 

Hosea huffed. “ _ Oh, _ ” he muttered, matching Arthur’s tone and cadence. “You think I liked seein’ you ride off to die, Arthur?” 

“Well, no.” 

“So why’re you so surprised I’d help you go straight?” Hosea asked, eyebrow still cocked. “You’re a smart man, Arthur. You can do whatever you wanna do. Raise horses, tend a homestead, anything.”

Arthur smiled. “‘S a little late for me to be changin’ career paths, old man. Lifestyles, maybe. I dunno. Might get a job up in Ambarino slingin’ beer at some cowboy bar. I ain’t decided yet.” 

Hosea smiled back. “When you’re ready, let me know,” he said. “I got some money saved up. I’ll help you out. John’s goin’ at the end of September. I got an old war buddy’a mine up in Anchorage who’s looking for somebody stubborn and stupid to do some work in the backcountry. Abigail’s gonna work for a doctor up there.” 

Arthur whistled. “I don’t wanna go that far afield, I don’t think,” he said. 

Hosea waved a hand. “I’ll see what I can do, son.” He hesitated. “You sure about this? Dutch isn’t… he won’t take it well. If you’re not sure…” 

“I’m pretty sure,” said Arthur quietly. He shrugged, still one-shouldered. “I don’t think Dutch is gonna turn aside, Hosea. He won’t listen to me ‘bout Micah. He’s gonna... he’s gonna run himself right into the federal pen, an’ I don’t wanna die in a gunfight with the feds or spend the rest’a my days behind some bars.” 

“I understand, Arthur,” said Hosea. He smiled again. “And like I said, I’ll help. You don’t have to worry about that, alright?” 

Arthur grunted. 

“You feel like workin’ today?” Hosea asked. 

“I can, if you need the hands.” 

“Ain’t about your hands,” said Hosea. “I haven’t seen you in nearly a month, Arthur. I wanna talk. Indulge me.” 

Arthur huffed, affection curling warm in his chest. He was glad that when he left, Arthur wouldn’t burn all of his bridges. He was glad he’d still get to keep one of his fathers. 

“Alright,” he allowed, climbing down off his bike. “But if I’m punchin’ in, Hosea, you better be payin’ me.” 

“After all the sick leave I had to shell out for your dumb ass?” Hosea said, shoving Arthur in the chest gently. “Not a chance.”

\---

Charles drove back up Arthur’s driveway on a Thursday morning, the Bonneville just as blue and battered as it had been the first time he’d ridden up all those weeks ago. 

Arthur was not a maudlin man by nature, but he did think it more than a little strange how quickly everything had changed. How fast his world had shifted. Arthur had met Charles in May and it was just now September. Only a season had passed. 

But Arthur was happier watching Charles bounce and rattle up his driveway than he’d ever been at Lost Country, so he didn’t stop to think about all that had changed too deeply. Arthur just stood up, dislodging his dogs from his lap, and stretched, waiting for Charles to make it up the drive and come to a stop. 

Charles did, though he took his sweet time doing it, driving slow past the horses so he could lean out the window and tell them all of the sweet things he should’ve been saving for Arthur. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. 

He was patient enough, though, as Charles finished rolling past the horses and finally pulled in, cutting the Bonneville’s engine and climbing out of the car. 

“Hey,” said Charles, smiling at Arthur. Arthur smiled back. 

“Hey,” he said. 

Charles opened the trunk up and rooted around for a minute, coming back up with a few creased cardboard boxes. 

“All my shit from the Saints,” Charles explained, at Arthur’s surprised expression. “And a few things from up north, for the horses. I brought Taima’s saddle along, a few other things too. My aunt sent you a blanket.” 

Arthur smiled. He couldn’t help it. “That was mighty kind’a her,” he said. “You’ll have t’thank her for me.” 

Charles rolled his own eyes. “You can thank her yourself, next time we’re up that way,” he said. “It won’t be too long, I’m sure. If she doesn’t see me once or twice every few months, she gets cranky.”

“The couch in her Florida room was pretty comfortable,” Arthur admitted. 

Charles hummed. “Where d’you want all this? And the things for the horses?”

“Set ‘em on the porch for now, Charles,” said Arthur, laughing. “We ain’t gotta rush it. Settle down for a minute first. Relax. We got the whole day ahead of us.” 

At some point, Arthur needed to tell Charles that he was leaving Lost Country. That he was going to make a clean break of it all, start his life over, do something else. But that was going to be a long, heavy conversation, and all Arthur wanted right now was Charles smiling at him. 

He reached out and caught Charles’s wrist in a loose grip. Charles raised an eyebrow and put a hand on Arthur’s hip, setting his boxes down on the porch. 

“C’mon in,” Arthur said, tugging Charles gently through his front door. Charles laughed and went easy, his hand steady and warm on Arthur’s hip. “I stopped at the store on my way in, picked up some things.”

“Coffee?” said Charles hopefully.

Arthur smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “An’ I’ll even make you some, if you’re nice.” 

“You’ll make me some anyway,” Charles pointed out, his eyes turning up at the corners. Arthur huffed, because that was true--Charles had him there. 

“Alright, if you’re nice I’ll make one’a them whipped cream rainbow sprinkle chocolate sauce monstrosities Tilly’s always drinkin’, an’ I won’t even make too much fun’a you for it.”

“What if I’m not nice?” Charles asked, raising a playful eyebrow. Arthur ignored the shiver of arousal that skated up his spine. He had shit to do today, damnit. He wasn’t going to let Charles distract him so early in the morning. 

“If you ain’t nice, you can have the burnt bits at the bottom’a the pot, I guess,” Arthur said, rolling his eyes. “I can wring out the grounds for you, if you like, an’ you can just crunch on ‘em while I go about my business an’ you sit on the porch feelin’ sorry for yourself.”

“Sorry for myself?” 

“Yeah,” said Arthur, airly. He gestured at the pile of groceries crowding his kitchen counter, the whipped cream and the caramel sauce, the steaks for dinner tonight, the peppers and squash that had come from their vines in Arthur’s garden. “”Cause you’d be missin’ out on all’a this, since you were mean an’ hurt my feelin’s. Keep up, Charles.”

“Looks like you’ve got the whole day planned out,” Charles said, ignoring Arthur’s teasing. “Coffee, steak, a busy day around the house…”

“Had some dessert planned too, but now I ain’t feelin’ so charitable,” said Arthur. He flicked the side of Charles’s hip, gently. “I know you got that sweet tooth.”

“Is that what all the caramel sauce is for?” asked Charles, a hungry look crossing that handsome, kind face. 

“Not tellin’,” Arthur said. “You wanna find out, help me unload the groceries.” 

“Bossy,” Charles murmured, but he was smiling and he did as Arthur asked, finally peeling himself away from Arthur’s side, shooing Cain out of the kitchen and starting to sort out the vegetables. 

Arthur let him be for a minute and got the coffee going. Despite his teasing he’d never leave Charles just the bottom dregs of the pot. Arthur was no genius, was no millionaire or model, but he could make a damn good cup of coffee and share it with someone he loved, and there was pride to be had in that. 

“Here,” said Arthur, sliding a chipped blue mug full of coffee across the counter towards Charles. “Top’a the pot. Caramel sauce’s by your left elbow, there.” 

Charles took the mug and the bottle of caramel sauce with a contented noise, flashing Arthur a bright smile. 

“And, uh,” said Arthur, as Charles opened the bottle and started to heap caramel into his coffee, “make sure you don’t use all’a that, yeah? It’s, uh.” Arthur’s ears reddened, giving him away. “For dessert tonight.” 

Charles laughed, uproarious and delighted, the sound bubbling up and spilling over, filling Arthur’s kitchen to the brim with joy. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand that's a wrap!! 
> 
> Thank you so, so, so much for reading, leaving kudos, commenting and sharing this story! It's been a wild... twenty-three?... months for me since I started this strange, incredibly niche little project (that turned out to be not so little... it has more words than the first three Harry Potter books, which caused a crisis, let me tell you), and I'm so happy to share it with you all! 
> 
> You've all been amazing, wonderful readers, and I hope you enjoyed the trip. 
> 
> We'll have one more week together! Next Sunday I'll be posting both my notes and my deleted scenes and ramblings and things, so if you have any questions that you wanted answered, drop a line and I'll dig up the appropriate notes! 
> 
> I will also be going back through and editing minor details here and there. 
> 
> Also, this fic has [art!](https://emi-illustrates.tumblr.com/post/626722452240777217/hey-yall-pls-do-yourself-a-favor-and-read-lost) Drawn by the wonderful emi-illustrates over on tumblr. I've been screaming quietly about it for some time now. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> If you'd like some Lost Country vibes between now and next Sunday, I keep a tag [here](https://ryehouses.tumblr.com/tagged/lost-country-tag) on my tumblr!


	12. deleted scenes & bonus features

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everyone!! 
> 
> Thank so, so much for the overwhelming response to the last chapter!! I've seen your art, I've read your comments, I've cherished every kudos and bookmark and hit on this story! It meant a lot to me to be able to write it, and it means even more to share it with you all. 
> 
> So thank you!! 
> 
> Below are a few deleted scenes/outtakes/writing exercises that I either wrote during this fic's hellish development period or scrapped from the larger story for various reasons or others. Some are in different character POVs, some just don't add to the overall narrative, and others I just couldn't fit in. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy them! 
> 
> I will also be putting my notes up in the next day or two.

##  in which dutch van der linde acquires a son, and hosea matthews acquires a headache 

(pre-story, circa 1973. for temporal context, dutch has a mullet) 

“Well?” Hosea asked, as Dutch quietly shut the gate behind him and collapsed into the nearest chair, the battered plastic groaning in protest. “How’s the kid?” 

“Sleepin’, or at least pretendin’ to,” Dutch reported. “He took to dinner without further violence, at least.” 

Dutch’s right eye had swelled up impressively. He looked like he’d been hit by a professional boxer, not an underfed teenager with an attitude problem. 

Hosea snorted. “Well that’s somethin’, at least.” 

“Yeah,” said Dutch, Hosea’s tone flying completely over his head. Dutch fished around in his pocket and pulled out a battered pack of American Spirits. He offered one to Hosea and shrugged when Hosea shook his head, then lit up and took a few deep breaths, the tip of his cigarette burning orange, the smoke curling over both of their heads to mingle with the desert air to create what was, in Hosea’s mind, a uniquely American smell; cigarette smoke and pool water and highway exhaust, dry chaparral, heated asphalt. 

Hosea wrinkled his nose. 

The pool at the Mardi Gras Motel in beautiful Reno, Nevada hadn’t been cleaned in about a decade, near as Hosea could tell. Chlorine stung his nose but despite all that chemical intervention, the water was green and filmy. 

Hosea watched that water move for a minute, pool scum swaying gently in a paltry breeze come north from Lake Tahoe, and shook his head. 

“He’s gonna be gone by morning, Dutch,” Hosea said. 

Dutch puffed away at his cigarette. “Naw, he ain’t,” he disagreed. 

Hosea raised an eyebrow. “Dutch, I’ve seen coyotes that were friendlier than that boy. He is completely wild. He ain’t gonna stick around, no matter how many burgers you feed him.” 

“He might,” Dutch said, unperturbed. “And he’s not wild, he’s just… well, a little rough around the edges, is all.” 

Hosea stared at his friend. Dutch had come up with some crazy schemes in the five years Hosea’d known him, but never anything quite like this. “Dutch,” said Hosea, slowly, “he  _ bit  _ you.” 

Dutch grimaced ruefully. “That is true,” he admitted. His hand was wrapped in bandages, a testament to the kid’s ferocity. As soon as Dutch had laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder behind that bar, the boy’d spun around and sunk his teeth into Dutch as deep as they would go. Hosea’d be half-impressed, really, if the kid’s hand hadn’t been in both his and Dutch’s pockets prior to the altercation. Biting a man three times one’s size was brave, even if it was equally stupid. 

“Best thing to do for that kid’s to find his parents, get him back where he belongs,” said Hosea, looking back out over the pool. He couldn’t see the stars from here, not with the orange haze of Reno hanging in the sky, but he could imagine them well enough. 

“C’mon, Hosea,” said Dutch. “You honestly think that boy’s got anybody lookin’ for him?” 

The kid  _ was  _ depressingly ragged, now that Hosea thought about it. His shoes had been mostly holes and tape and his shirt had been a few sizes too big. His hair had been lank and greasy. 

“We ain’t runnin’ a charity, Dutch,” Hosea said. “We don’t--we don’t live the kinda life that’s good for a kid.” 

“We’re probably a damn sight better than whatever hell he got out of,” Dutch pointed out. “And at least with us, he’d eat.” 

“Yeah, eat  _ us,  _ probably.” Hosea shot another pointed look at Dutch’s bandaged hand. 

“Aw, I just surprised him, is all,” Dutch said, waving Hosea’s concern aside. “I was in that room with him for twenty whole minutes and he didn’t bite me once. Didn’t even pull a knife on me.” 

“You gave him a knife?” Hosea exclaimed, lurching up out of his chair. 

Dutch chuckled and caught Hosea’s elbow, pulled him back down. “No, he came with one. He’s got one hidden in his sock.”

Hosea sighed explosively.

“What do you know about raisin’ a kid?” he demanded. Hosea was old enough to know better than to think he’d be a good father. But Dutch was--well. Dutch was younger than Hosea and had a tendency to think himself invincible, even if his heart was in the right place. 

It wasn’t like Hosea  _ wanted  _ the poor kid out on the streets, even if the kid  _ was  _ a little shithead with eyes bigger than his stomach. It was just that their life, Hosea and Dutch’s life, was no life for a child. They were never any one place longer than a few weeks. They were on the run half the time. They had no roots, no families, no stability, and for a grown man, that was fine. 

_ But for a boy?  _

But there was an excited gleam in Dutch’s eyes, and Hosea knew by now that once Dutch had an idea lodged into that hard head of his, he’d never let it go. 

“I’m sure we could figure it out, old girl,” Dutch wheedled, eyes twinkling. “Between the two of us we can manage it, don’t you think? He’s mostly grown already.”

Hosea snorted. Dutch was pulling that one out of his ass, Hosea was pretty sure. The kid, as far as Hosea knew, hadn’t said a damn word to Dutch about anything, let alone his age. 

“If he’s got rabies, I’m gonna let him eat you first,” Hosea warned. 

Dutch  _ beamed.  _ “He’s a good kid, Hosea, you’ll see.” 

Hosea held up a hand. “I didn’t say we’re gonna keep him, Dutch. If he doesn’t wanna run around the countryside with us, well, that’s his choice. We can  _ ask  _ him, is what I’m sayin’. He’s a boy, not a stray dog.”

Dutch grimaced, appropriately abashed. “Right,” he said, finishing his cigarette and reaching for another. “We’ll ask him, then.”

Hosea rolled his eyes. He half-hoped that the kid turned Dutch down flat, but still. He hadn’t liked how skinny and ragged the boy’d been. It couldn’t hurt to have him around for a few days, could it? They could feed him up a little, see about getting him some new clothes, do what they could to get some of that hard, angry shine out of the kid’s eyes… 

Then Hosea realized that he was playing right into Dutch’s hands, and whacked Dutch upside the head, sending his new cigarette fizzling into the green pool. 

Despite all that, Dutch’s laugh rose straight up to the sky. 

  
  
  


##  in which arthur morgan learns a skill 

(pre-story, circa 1975) 

Arthur eyed the Harley like he half-expected it to jump up and bite him. Dutch smiled, fond. Arthur had been tagging along for a few months now and he’d turned out to be a pretty great kid. Angry and maybe a bit too quick to throw a punch, but Dutch and Hosea--Hosea mostly, who’d turned out to be a real nursemaid--had worn down the kid’s defenses enough that Arthur would let them see past all the anger and bluster. 

_ Usually, anyway,  _ Dutch thought. Arthur’d relax when he was around just Dutch and Hosea, but bringing him around strangers tended to put Arthur’s hackles up fast. He was standing in the parking lot of the Harley-Davidson dealership with his shoulders pulled up to his ears and his hands curled into fists at his side, and every time the salesman moved, Arthur pulled a lip back over his teeth, like a dog worrying a bone. 

Dutch squeezed Arthur’s shoulder, gently. Arthur didn’t relax, not really, but he did edge closer to Dutch, not quite hiding in Dutch’s shadow but definitely staying close enough that Dutch could protect him, if he needed to. 

_ Progress, I think.  _

“What d’you think, Arthur?” Dutch asked, cutting off the salesman as he rambled about horsepower and gas mileage and storage capacity. “You like it?” Dutch had come looking for a newer bike. His old one, a ‘44 Harley Knucklehead, had died on him in the Sierra Nevada and was, according to the best mechanical minds money could buy (Hosea, bribed with beer), it was officially DOA. 

Dutch had never liked cars or trucks, and Arthur shared his dislike, so Dutch was in the market for a new bike. He’d had an eye on the new ‘74 Superglides for a few weeks, so Dutch had rambled on over to the newest dealership, Arthur in tow, to take a look. 

Unfortunately, the new Superglides were a bit out of Dutch’s price range. Feeding a teenager had put more of a dent in Dutch’s pocket than he’d thought initially, though he’d never tell Arthur that, and he and Hosea were between jobs, at the moment. 

Still, the bike that  _ was  _ in Dutch’s price range, a ‘55 Panhead in matte white, was pretty nice. It’d look good on the highway, and Panheads were sturdy. 

Arthur shrugged, eyeing the salesman. “‘S fine,” he muttered. 

“Just fine?” Dutch said, looking up. “Well, we gotta make sure it’s more’n fine, don’t we? Mister, uh, Jacobson, what d’you say to me an’ my son here takin’ a test drive?” 

“Both of you?” The salesman said, eyeing them dubiously. Dutch smiled and tried to look as morally upstanding as possible. 

“Well, we’ve both gotta like it, if we’re takin’ it home,” Dutch explained. 

The salesman chuckled. “You quite the rider, young man?”

Arthur scowled and shrugged. 

Dutch knocked his elbow against the boy, gently. “So, what d’you say, Mister Jacobson? We take a test drive? Just up the road an’ back?”

“Aw, sure, I don’t see why not. You’ve gotta wear helmets, though. Company policy.”

“Sure, sure,” Dutch said. Hosea made Arthur wear a helmet all the time anyway, and Dutch had been wearing one too, out of solidarity. “C’mon, son, let’s get you kitted up.”

They were on the highway within a few minutes as Dutch put the white Harley through its paces, Arthur hanging on to his waist. Despite her age, the bike handled well. The engine was in good shape and the road was smooth. 

Wind licked up under the edges of Dutch’s helmet, sweet and cool. He grinned to himself. He had an idea. 

Dutch eased over to the shoulder and stopped the bike, twisting around to take a look at Arthur. Arthur blinked up at him, helmet foggy. 

“Well?” Dutch asked. “What d’you think, Arthur?”

Arthur shrugged. “‘S fine,” he repeated, brow furrowing like he thought Dutch was trying to test him. 

Dutch laughed. “C’mere,” he said, hopping down. “Switch me. You drive.”

“Me?” 

“Sure, why not? You gotta learn sometime, kid. You’re, what, fourteen?” 

Arthur looked between Dutch and the bike. “There’bouts,” he finally allowed. 

Dutch grinned, victorious. He and Hosea had been trying to pry Arthur’s past out for weeks now, despite Arthur’s stubborn deflections, and it was good to get  _ something,  _ even something as trivial as Arthur’s age. 

“Practically a man!” said Dutch, jovially. “C’mon, don’t be shy. I’m here. I won’t let you crash, I promise.”

Arthur looked at Dutch for a minute, his green eyes guarded. But when Dutch didn’t yank the rug out from under him, didn’t whack Arthur upside the head or shout at him, and eventually, Arthur decided to take Dutch at his word, and trust him.

“Alright,” said Arthur, reaching for the handlebars. He was smiling. “Sure. How hard can it be?”

  
  


##  in which micah bell makes a friend 

(pre-story, a few months before arthur meets charles)

Arthur scowled. “What’s  _ he  _ doin’ here?” he asked, jerking his chin at Micah, who had hopped out of the back of Javier’s truck and was looking around like he had thoughts of making himself comfortable. 

Javier grimaced apologetically. “Sorry,” he said. “Hosea… strongly encouraged me to bring him along. Something about Sadie killing him if he kept hanging out at the bar during his off hours.”

Arthur grunted. He liked Sadie very much and Micah not at all, so in his opinion it wouldn’t be a bad thing if Sadie shot Micah. Might even liven the place up a little. “Micah,” Arthur said. “You know shit ‘bout fixin’ fences?” 

“Sorry, cowpoke,” Micah said, spreading his hands. “This, uh, little domestic scene you’ve got here ain’t really my thing.”

“That mean you don’t know how to swing a damn hammer?” 

Micah only shrugged, indolent. Arthur grunted again, and spat at Micah’s feet. 

“Fine,” Arthur growled. He didn’t really want MIcah in close proximity anyway. Micah’d only been with them for a month or so now, but Arthur was pretty sure that he’d never like Micah, no matter how much time they spent together. 

“Mind the horses, then,” Arthur said, gesturing at the herd across the field. The broken fence hadn’t tempted any of them to make a run for it yet--it was fortunately too far away for Buell to see it--but Arthur didn’t want to have to spend today in Micah’s company  _ and  _ tracking down his horses. 

“Uh, all of ‘em?” Micah asked, eyeing the herd. Arthur had six horses now, with the addition of Rooster and Lyra, his two newest. 

“They’re horses, Micah, not wild dogs,” said Arthur. “Figure it out. Oh, an’ stay away from the white mare, will ya? She ain’t too keen on strangers.” 

Micah opened his mouth to protest, but Arthur wasn’t interested. He wanted to fix his damn fence before it got dark, that was all. He was going to have to have words with Hosea when he saw the man next. 

_ Sendin’ Micah, really,  _ thought Arthur. Javier at least was dead helpful--he’d helped Arthur get all of the fencing set up in the first place, and was a handy feller to have around. Between the two of them they’d likely have the hole patched up in no time, and then Arthur could kick Micah off his property. 

“He didn’t shut up the entire drive up here,” Javier reported, scooping up a toolbox and keeping pace with Arthur. 

“I’m sure,” Arthur said, dryly. “He stickin’ around, then?”

“I think so, yeah. Dutch really likes him.” 

Arthur groaned. “S’pose I should be glad Micah’s a grown man an’ not a starvin’ teenager,” he said. “I don’t want another brother, ‘specially not one like him.” 

Javier laughed and knocked his shoulder against Arthur’s. “Aw, c’mon,” he said. “Micah’s not so bad. He’s just a little… rough, is all.” 

Arthur snorted. “A little rough, an’ a little piece’a--” 

But he never got to finish, because from across the paddock, surrounded by startled horses and waving a bloody hand up in the air, Micah began to howl. 

  
  


##  in which charles smith needs a nap 

(meet cute, but pov swap)

One of the first lessons Charles had learned after he’d put his boots down stateside and first got his CDL was that every driver in the world had his Thing. Nobody could spend weeks on the road hauling shit from one side of the country to the other without picking up a habit or six. 

Some guys blew all their money on time with the lot lizards. Others munched on West Coast turnarounds like they were candy. Some spent hours and hours collecting license plate numbers or stopping to visit kitschy tourist traps. Truckers blew their money on candy, on coke, on women. The guy who taught Charles to drive a big rig, a strung-out Korean War vet named Paul, dropped thousands of dollars on Civil War memorabilia, combing antique shows and flea markets for coat buttons and old letters. 

Charles didn’t have thousands of dollars, didn’t really have any interest in women and refused to go near most drugs, which left him with only one habit to pick up; Charles drank a lot of coffee. 

He’d picked up the habit slogging through the heat of Panama. American coffee was different, harsher, but with enough sugar, Charles could drink just about anything. By the time he had a year of driving under his belt, he’d become a dues-paying rewards member of just about every major and minor coffee chain west of the Mississippi. 

He was just two more coffees away from a free travel mug at Cinnabon which was, unfortunately, shaping up to be the highlight of Charles’s year.

_ There’s not a Cinnabon in Bumfuck, New Hanover _ ,  _ though, _ Charles thought, scrubbing sleep out of his eyes and lurching down the road towards the promising lights of the only coffee shop within a twenty-mile radius. 

Valentine, population four hundred and six, had one coffee shop. It was called Lost Country Brewing Company and it doubled, as far as Charles could tell, as the world’s shittiest dive bar during its nighttime hours. 

At five in the morning on a Wednesday, the place was dead silent and utterly abandoned, except for the dim neon OPEN sign and a neat black Harley Panhead that had been parked right up beside the front door. The smell of burnt coffee singed the air. 

Charles hesitated at the door. He’d come to Lost Country a few times now--it was his only choice, really, unless he deigned to submit himself to coffee at the Saints’ continental breakfast bar. Every time he’d come through, there’d been a different person manning Lost Country’s chipped counter; a man with scars on his face, a silver-haired older man who slipped Charles free muffins, a few different, pretty women, but Charles had never seen the Harley out front before. 

Truckers and bikers didn’t tend to get along. He really didn’t want to get jumped at five in the morning over a cup of subpar coffee, but Charles had to be in New Austin by noon and the last time he’d been out this way, he’d had a bear on his ass for forty miles trying to catch Charles flying. If he was going to have to deal with cops prowling up and down the roads this early in the goddamn morning, he was going to need some coffee. 

He nudged the door open, won over by the promise of caffeine. 

Inside, Lost Country was the same as it had always been, slow and sleepy and kind of charming, in a backwoods hillbilly sort of way, and there was only one guy inside behind the bar. Charles relaxed. The biker was an employee, then, which meant he probably wouldn’t start any trouble.

He hadn’t noticed Charles come in yet. He was a big, sandy-haired feller, a sharp jaw hidden under a few days’ worth of stubble. He had a white shirt on, a too-small apron, and a heel of bread in one hand. The guy scratched his jaw absently, yawned, and looked up.

His eyes were very green. Their color jumped out at Charles, brighter than anything else in the room. Charles froze, struck, and the guy froze too. 

The guy recovered himself first. He set the heel of bread down, wiped his hands on his apron, cleared his throat. The guy raised an eyebrow, like he’d never seen somebody walk through the shop’s door in his life. 

_ Well?  _ His face seemed to say.

Charles’ watch buzzed; he was running late. He threw his dignity into the wind and said, as seriously as he could manage, “I need all of the caramel sauce that you have.” 

  
  
  


##  in which felony assault is a bonding activity, send tweet 

(between chapters 4 & 5)

In the middle of June, everybody went a little crazy with the heat and some tweaked-out jackass didn’t get what he wanted from Mary-Beth. Mary-Beth didn’t supplement her income by hooking, unlike some of the other girls, and she very rarely took lovers out of Lost Country’s Friday night pool.

So when a tweaker moron tried to proposition Mary-Beth at ten in the morning in the dead head of June, Mary-Beth refused. The tweaker responded by flipping tables and bolting out the front door before Arthur or Sean could grab hold of him. 

Arthur was picking up the pieces--literally, in the case of the rack of mugs the tweaker dumped all over the floor, and figuratively, in the case of Mary-Beth’s nerves--when Charles stomped in, tired, pissed, and hauling the errant tweaker by one ear. 

“This guy causing problems for you too?” Charles asked, shaking the tweaker vigorously. Arthur was immensely gratified to see that the jackass’s nose was broken, his eyes blackened and swelling closed. Charles’ knuckles were scraped and his cheekbone was grazed. 

Arthur carefully put down his dustpan and cracked his knuckles. The tweaker had the sense to blanch. “Matter’a fact, he was,” Arthur said. He tilted a chin back towards the kitchen. “He upset Miss Gaskill and caused quite a mess. What’d he do to you?”

“Saw me comin’ out of my room at the Saints and pulled a knife,” said Charles, pleasantly, like he got knives pulled on him all the time. Warm heat began to coil in Arthur’s gut. “He was coming from your way in a hurry, so I figured that if he was dumb enough to pull a knife on me, he might’ve been dumb enough to cause a commotion here.” 

“He ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed,” Arthur agreed. He gave the paling tweaker a gimlet eye, then grinned at Charles. “Wanna bring ‘im around back? Me ‘n Sean wanna show him the error of his ways. You’re welcome t’ join in, if you want some restitution for that cut-up face of yours.” 

Charles smiled back. “Lead the way.” 

##  in which sadie adler deserves a raise 

(between chapters 4 & 7)

“So,” Sadie said, collapsing down into the nearest chair and tucking her hand underneath her chin. “Arthur’s got himself a new feller, huh?”

Javier rolled his eyes. “Not you too,” he said. “I’ve been fending off questions all night.”

“Well,” Sadie reasoned, “it’s not every day our Arthur takes a handsome feller out for dinner an’ drinks, is it?” 

“Sounds like more than dinner and drinks to me,” Javier said. He grimaced, probably realizing that he’d said too much, but Sadie knew not to push. Javier was just as much a gossip as the rest of them; he just liked to pretend that he wasn’t. If Sadie gave him some space, Javier’d tell her whatever she wanted to know in his own time. 

She’d gotten pretty good at reading Dutch’s Boys. Sadie’d had to, in the beginning. Dutch was a decent man and all his folks were decent folks, for the most part, but she’d been completely and utterly alone when she’d fallen in with the rest of them, and trust had been a luxury she hadn’t been able to afford. 

“Yeah, Arthur ain’t really the type to wine an’ dine a feller, ‘less he really means it,” Sadie said, neatly skirting around Javier’s hesitancy. “Which brings me back around to the matter at hand; Arthur’s got himself a new feller, huh?”

Javier rolled his eyes. “Seems that way,” he finally allowed. “You probably haven’t met him--he’s a regular on the morning shift, usually gets in between five and six ay-em. ‘S why Arthur didn’t meet him ‘til a few weeks ago.”

Sadie nodded, filing that information away. “An’ Arthur likes him?” she asked. Sadie didn’t… worry about Arthur, necessarily. Arthur had always been capable, as long as Sadie’d known him, and he’d always been the most solid of Dutch’s people, too. The toughest to rattle. Most men Sadie knew had wildfire tempers, but Arthur’s temper was cold and implacable. He was a decent judge of character too, most of the time. If Arthur liked this feller, Sadie probably didn’t have anything to worry about. 

_ Still,  _ Sadie thought to herself, watching Javier’s face. Javier had known Arthur longer, after all. If he thought there was reason to be concerned, well. Sadie’d have to investigate this new man of Arthur’s for herself. 

Javier shrugged. “Seems to, at least,” he said. “He brought Charles in here last week. Seems like a decent man. He helped Arthur out of a tight spot, and seems willing enough to put up with Arthur’s… Arthur-ness.” 

Sadie smiled. Arthur certainly had his own special brand of  _ Arthur-ness, _ as Javier’d put it. Arthur could be as prickly as a porcupine when he wanted to be and sweeter than sugar when the mood struck him. Sadie worried over him, even when she knew that he wouldn’t want her too. Arthur was a strange case, an odd mixture of hard and soft. Sadie couldn’t help but want to look out for him, since Arthur spent so much time and effort looking after the rest of them. 

“Well, alright, then,” Sadie said. “‘S long as you’re sure he’s happy, an’ not bein’, I dunno, taken advantage of by some outta town feller.” 

Javier laughed. “Nah, Hosea vetted this guy, apparently. He’s clean. And Arthur does really like him--he’s taken Charles out with the horses, the whole nine yards.” 

Sadie nodded to herself. That was good. She was still going to take a look into this Charles Smith herself, of course, but having Hosea’s good opinion mattered some. 

“Well,” said Sadie, grinning at Javier, “good. I was about tired’a Arthur mopin’ around anyway.” 

“You say that now,” Javier said, half-warning and half-amused. “You’ve never seen a lovestruck Arthur Van der Linde before, though. He’s… kind of unbearable.” 

“Beats mean an’ miserable, though,” Sadie pointed out. 

Javier shook his head. “You say that now,” he repeated. “But just wait until he starts spouting poetry.”

##  in which the town of valentine is abuzz 

(between chapters 4 & 7)

The Van der Lindes had all descended upon the town of Valentine, New Hanover like half-starved, leather-backed vultures. Fifteen or twenty of them had come all at once, more or less--nobody could ever agree on the exact number--and within a few weeks they’d settled so snugly into Valentine it was like they’d always been there. 

They weren’t all Van der Lindes, of course--there was the main one, Dutch, who was either a renegade preacher or an escaped Mansonite or a Norwegian mobster on the run from the law, depending on who was asked. 

Then there were Van der Linde’s three sons. The eldest was a big, flat-eyed fellow, the youngest surly and scarred, and the middle boy was the most pleasant of the three, and always knew the best fishing spots. 

As far as anybody in town knew, those four--Van der Linde and his boys--were the only  _ true  _ Van der Lindes, but they’d come into town with a whole pack of other folks in tow, women young and old, men of varying levels of ill temper, an entire brace of motorcycles, campers and battered Fords that had sprouted up in the southern part of town nearly overnight. Despite the fact that there’d been fifteen or twenty of them, all of the Van der Lindes had been close and strange and secretive, so even though there were more than  _ just  _ Van der Lindes among their number, Valentine’s townsfolk decided to forgo the difficulty of sorting out the Grimshaws and the Matthews and the Williamsons, and lumped all of the new folk together under one name and label.

Despite their less-than-warm welcome by the town, the Van der Lindes didn’t leave. Dutch bought an abandoned feed store and within a year had opened a bar, which was staffed by his sons and various hangers-on. 

The motorcycles disappeared one by one, replaced by more respectable Jeeps and Fords, and despite their fondness for throwing down with any jumped-up cowhands who wandered across their path, none of Dutch’s sons ever caused too much trouble for the town. 

Slowly, bit by bit, Valentine began to accept them. First there was sweet Mary-Beth, who won over the entire staff of tellers at the bank with some homemade scones. Then Dutch’s middle son Javier made friends with some of the ranch hands, swapping fishing spots back and forth. Then Hosea Matthews brought the entire church choir around, and after that it was almost like the Van der Lindes had always lived in Valentine. Nobody looked up when one of them went walking down the street, and everybody turned a blind eye when women of less than savory repute started using Lost Country Brewing Company, LLC, as their default base of operations. 

That was, of course, until Dutch’s oldest son started going around town with a stranger at his side. 

Valentine didn’t see too many strangers. It was not a town with a growing population, aside from the odd loner, cattleman or religious cult- _ cum _ -biker gang- _ cum _ -suprisingly talented pack of baristas and barkeeps. 

“Isn’t that the Van der Linde boy?” Doctor Calloway asked, leaning over the railing at Smithfield’s. 

His drinking buddy for the evening, Morris Peyton, watched with a curious frown. Sure enough it  _ was  _ Van der Linde’s boy, the big blond one with the vicious right hook. Morris had only ever seen him--his name was something old-fashioned, Morris thought, like  _ Arthur  _ or  _ Alfred,  _ but he couldn’t quite remember--look mean and pissed. 

As Arthur-or-Alfred went down Main Street, though, he looked almost… content. The man walking at his side was just as big and just as broad, a dark-skinned man with long black hair and his shirt tucked into his jeans, and the stranger and Arthur-or-Alfred were walking so close together that their wrists brushed every other step. 

Morris took another drink. “Well,” he said, “guess that’s why the big feller turned down poor Anastasia, huh?”

Ben Calloway and Morris Peyton didn’t spare the odd couple another thought, but they weren’t the only ones who’d noticed. Over the course of the next week, news of the Van der Linde boy--this one was almost  _ definitely  _ Arthur, the town decided, but couldn’t be sure because this one, unlike his other two brothers, didn’t live in Valentine proper but was set up somewhere north-- and his new beau spread like wildfire.

“They had dinner together at Keane’s,” Linda, a waitress, told Anatasia over coffee. “Were there nearly all night, sweet as ya please.”

“I know the feller Van der Linde was with,” said Amos Levi, who heard from Anatasia’s friend Moira at the hardware store the next day. “His name’s Smith, he’s some long-hauler who keeps a room at the Saints, always real polite--”

“--too nice for a man like Arthur Van der Linde,” Alma Mackey, the town lawyer’s wife, told Quentin Fern while Fern trimmed her husband’s hair. 

“Nonsense,” said Louise, who was polishing tables at the bar. “Arthur’s plenty sweet. Helped me out of a bad spot once, an’ didn’t even ask for money.”

“When did we get so many out-of-towners?” the men at the poker table complained. “Time was we knew everybody walkin’ down Main Street. Now I’m wonderin’ if I should lock my door at night, if men we don’t know are walkin’ around.” 

“I don’t mind if we get new blood in town,” Sheriff Malloy said. “New blood is new business, ain’t it? This town’s been dyin’ since eighteen ninety-nine.”

“New business is good,” Jacob Worth agreed, when relayed Sheriff Malloy’s words over a transaction a few days later. “But it’s only good if they’re spendin’ money in Valentine. Has anybody even  _ seen  _ Van der Linde or his feller since they took up together? That dinner at Keane’s was weeks ago now.” 

“Arthur stopped by two days ago,” said Amos, when asked. “Bought some camping tack for his horses. Didn’t say much--he’s a quiet feller, you ever notice that?--but judging by what he was buying, I’d say he’s gonna spend a few days out in the woods somewhere.”

“Camping’s so romantic,” Linda the waitress sighed. 

Anastasia snorted. “No it ain’t,” she said. 

But despite the town’s high hopes, neither Arthur Van der Linde nor his new feller spent much time in town. Smith kept his room at the Saints--the hotel’s owner, a consummate professional, was closed-mouthed about him, but the maids certainly weren’t---and Arthur even spent the night there a time or two, but by the time August rolled around, Valentine was starved for new gossip. 

“Nothing ever happens here,” sighed Ben Calloway, once again leaning on the railing at Smithfield’s morosely, a drink in his hand. 

“Nothin’,” Morris Payton agreed. 

“Nothin’?” said a new voice, and both men looked up to see a tall, thin man with a pockmarked face standing on the bottom step of Smithfield’s porch, watching them intently. When he saw them looking, he smiled, all-friendly like, and flashed a golden dollar coin between his fingers. 

“I’m sure there’s somethin’ goin’ on here, fellers,” the stranger said. “Why don’t I buy you both a drink?”

##  in which charles smith learns to fly 

(chapter 7)

“Keep your knees in, Charles,” Arthur said anxiously, holding Buell fast by the chin. The crotchety old stallion tossed his head a few times, hind feet prancing, but he knew better than to buck while Arthur was holding his bridle. 

“I have ridden a horse before, you know,” said Charles, amused. He had a good seat on Buell’s back, knees tucked in, back straight, chin up. He had Buell’s reins loose in his hand and an air of confidence about him that was maddeningly attractive. 

“Yeah, but Buell ain’t a horse,” Arthur explained. Buell snorted and stamped again. “He’s punishment for mankind’s sins.”

Charles chuckled. “He’s not that bad, Arthur,” Charles said, nudging Buell with his knees. 

The old cremello, miracle of miracles, actually took a step forward without trying to twist and pitch Charles into the dirt. He took a second step when Charles asked him too, then a third and a fourth without any fuss. 

“You’re not so bad, are you, big guy?” Charles crooned, patting Buell’s neck affectionately. Buell put his ears back, probably more offended at the sweet tone than anything else, but that was the extent of the stallion’s disagreement. 

Arthur whistled. “Well, color me impressed,” he said. He let go of Buell’s bridle and stepped back. “You’ve lasted longer’n just about anybody but me an’ Hosea.” 

“Buell didn’t throw Hosea?”

“Nah,” said Arthur. “Was prob’ly worried the old man’d turn him into glue on the spot. Hosea’s not a soft touch like me.” 

Charles laughed. He kept nudging Buell forward, convincing the sour horse to plod around the paddock with decent humor. “A soft touch, are you?” 

Arthur shrugged and leaned back against the fence, happy just to watch Charles ride. “Somethin’ like that,” he said. 

Charles twisted around to smile at Arthur, toothy. “I dunno,” he said, and Arthur could just  _ see  _ the joke coming. He braced himself to shoot back, a retort on the tip of his tongue, but Buell, seeing an opening, made his move. 

“Shit!” Charles yelped, as Buell gave an almighty buck, hooves flashing, and sent Charles sailing through the air. 

##  in which arthur morgan discovers he’s kind of hot for nerds 

(post-story)

Nobody who had ever met Arthur Morgan had ever described him as an  _ intellectual,  _ which was fine by Arthur. He could read and write, he could get philosophical if he’d had enough to drink, he could keep a budget and his grasp of politics was decent enough to hold a conversation. He would rather leave all of the heavy intellectual lifting to men like Dutch; thinking too much only led Arthur down dark roads, filling his head with troubling thoughts, like the inherent futility of trying to get blood off your hands or man’s inborn proclivity towards violence. 

It was much better to be stupid and more or less content, in Arthur’s opinion. Hosea despaired of him still, after all these years--despaired of all of them, really, ‘cause there wasn’t a single one of them, except for maybe Lenny, who’d really taken to Hosea’s teaching. 

Arthur wasn’t bothered by it. He read enough to satisfy his own curiosity, caught the news when he couldn’t avoid it, and when those troubling thoughts came ‘round, he banished them with hard work. Between the horses, the shop, and the deliveries Hosea had Arthur running, there was always something to do. 

The trouble started when Charles moved in with Arthur. 

Charles made Arthur want to write poetry. He made Arthur want to read about long-dead political activists and argue for hours about current events. He moved in with all his clothes and his horses and his surprisingly deft hands in the kitchen, that was true, but Charles  _ also  _ moved in with all of his books and all of his ideas, which he was keen on sharing with Arthur, at length and in great detail. 

It was terrible. Arthur’d thought that relationships were supposed to be about, well, more physical aspects, and he  _ was  _ enjoying that part of things, don’t get him wrong, but one morning maybe a month after Charles had moved in, Charles shuffled into the kitchen and announced, loudly, that he had some thoughts on retroactive social justice as applied in rural Western states, and Arthur popped a boner so fast he had to take a minute and sit down. 

It was ridiculous. All of Charles’s ideas were good ones, of course, but still. Ridiculous. 

  
  


##  in which the baby comes 

(post-story) 

“Is it s’posed to take this long?” Arthur asked, resisting the urge to wring his hands like an overwrought choir girl at Sunday service. Lyra was panting into the hay, tail swishing restlessly, round as a melon, and she’d been in labor for hours now. Arthur would’ve thought that the foal would’ve come by now, and he’d never been able to tolerate seeing animals in pain. 

Charles huffed. After the first few hours his patience with Arthur’s worrying had frayed a bit, and now he was sweaty, covered in fluids and elbow-deep in Lyra’s innards. His patience had worn pretty thin. 

“It’s not breech or anything,” Charles finally said, apparently done with whatever arcane veterinary ritual he’d been performing. “Just… taking its time. Shouldn’t be long now.” 

Lyra snorted, sides heaving. 

Arthur stroked her forelock. He had not intended to let Lyra fall pregnant, what with the move and all. They’d ended up in Montana, the irony of which was not lost on Arthur, and it had been a busy and stressful six months buying the new house, fixing up the barn, moving the horses up in twos and threes. 

Lyra and Rooster had taken advantage of Arthur’s distraction and had seen fit to grace the earth with their undoubtedly ill-tempered offspring. Arthur couldn’t even complain that much; he’d been nervous about it, having never raised a foal before, but Charles had been over the moon. 

Two years into being with him, Arthur was pretty sure he’d never be able to deny Charles anything, so. Here they all were, gathered in and around the barn expectantly, waiting for Lyra’s foal. 

The rest of the horses, banished from the barn, watched from various windows and fence-posts. Arthur and Charles had only come up here with eight. Buell, of course, now in his twenties and still unruly, and Rooster and Lyra, Taima, Falmouth, Magnolia and Blue. Reliance had found a nice home in the Heartlands minding sheep. Hemingway had shown some flair as a barrel horse and was now making his way through the circuits. John had taken Cloudrunner with him up to Alaska, citing the need for a steady horse given Old Boy’s advancing decrepitude. 

Arthur’d picked up a few more since they’d settled, though. He couldn’t seem to stop himself. His newest project was an absolutely enormous black Shire named Staunch, who was a sweetheart, really, with only a few lapses in judgement. 

Charles had picked up a pretty American Paint he had aspirations of turning into a cattle horse, so the herd had been at a nice even ten. Charles had suggested picking up another horse, to bring them to a nice dozen once Lyra’s foal came, but Arthur’d put his foot down. 

_ For the time being, anyway.  _

The last few years had shown Arthur that he wasn’t really all that tough at all, when it came down to it. All Charles had to do was look a bit put out and Arthur’d fall over just trying to make him smile. 

Lyra gave a sudden, great heave, and Arthur startled, leaning over her with concern. 

“She alright?” he asked. 

This time, Charles smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “You ready to meet your new baby?” 

Arthur probably shouldn’t have grinned at that, pleased and proud, but he did. He was. “ _ Your  _ baby, y’mean,” Arthur said. “I had to bottle-feed all those kittens for six weeks. This next one’s all yours, Charles.” 

Charles laughed. “I get to name it, then,” he said. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “Whatever you want."


	13. notes & things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my roommate, upon hearing that i had notes and deleted scenes and things: "do you really have _appendices_ for your coffeeshop au?"

## A List of Warnings 

  * Alcoholism. Bill is (canonically in-game) an alcoholic, as were both Arthur’s and Charles’s fathers. Alcohol abuse is prevalent throughout the fic, as they all do work in a bar 
  * An ace-spectrum character has and enjoys having intercourse with his partner. In this fic Arthur shades more towards gray/demisexuality and has no problem with having sex, but his sex drive is fairly low and he sometimes struggles with attraction. This is treated respectfully by his partner. More thoughts can be found in the “Character Headcanons” section
  * Animal death. Dutch kills a trapped, injured buck in Lemoyne 
  * Canon-compliant character deaths. Annabelle, Bessie, Eliza, Isaac, Jenny, Hamish and others are all dead
  * Canon-typical violence. They’re bikers, folks 
  * Foster care/mentions of the foster system. Arthur, Charles and John were all foster children at one point or another. None of them had spectacular experiences
  * Internalized guilt, grief and anger
  * Mentions of animal abuse. Most of Arthur’s animals are rescues of some sort 
  * Mentions of child abuse. Fairly non-explicit, but Arthur implies that his father and at least a few of his foster families abused him, leading to Arthur running away. I’d argue that Lyle’s treatment of Arthur is canon-compliant, but YMMV on that
  * Mild drug use. Nobody is doing hard drugs, but Arthur and John occasionally smoke weed. There are some mentions of harder drug use/abuse among various members of the gang, including the use of acid/LSD, ecstasy, cocaine and peyote. Peyote is a cactus with hallucinogenic properties. Many indigenous North & Central American cultures have used peyote for ritual and medicinal purposes for centuries 
  * Mild gore, especially w/r/t Arthur’s shoulder injury in Part 2
  * Military mentions. Several characters are veterans, so that comes with a whole bunch of shit to unpack
  * Minor mentions of homophobia from Micah and Bill. Bill’s is described mostly as internalized homophobia
  * Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Both Arthur and Charles exhibit some subtle symptoms
  * Self-worth issues, self-esteem issues. Arthur reflects canon here and does not have a great sense of his own worth. Some of it is tied to his inability to protect Eliza and Isaac. A lot of it comes from his fractured upbringing 
  * Sex work mention. Some of the members of Dutch’s gang supplement their income with sex work. This is mentioned a few times but no one thinks much of it one way or the other
  * Racism. Canon-typical, especially w/r/t the Lemoyne Raiders as a concept and Micah’s attitude towards Charles
  * This fic is rated “E”. Everyone is consenting, but y’all they are, y’know. In love or whatever
  * Tobacco use. I think dipping is gross as fuck and refuse to write about it, but most of the gang smokes at one point or another



  
  


## Character Headcanons

  1. Arthur Morgan/Arthur Van der Linde
    1. For most of this fic, Arthur uses “Van der Linde” as his surname. He was adopted by Dutch to prevent Arthur from being found by anyone looking for Arthur Morgan, Missing Child; by the 1970s, it was a fair bit harder to lose track of a child than it was the century prior 
    2. Arthur is on the asexuality spectrum. He probably shades closest to grey- or demisexuality. He does not often experience sexual attraction. He is biromantic and mentions having relationships with both women (Mary, Eliza) and men (Charles, Albert The Little Gay Camera Guy, Hamish). Arthur doesn’t spend a lot of time parsing his sexuality in this fic because he’s thirty-six and fairly comfortable with it 
    3. Arthur had a pretty shit time in the foster care system. One of the challenges for me with this fic was folding canonical character backstories into a more modern era without a) going super overboard and b) handwaving away bits that didn’t quite fit. This fic wasn’t intended as a critique of the American foster care system or to imply in any way that all foster parents/homes are neglectful or abusive, but was rather intended to put Arthur’s canonical, in-game past (orphaned, troubled childhood, failed by his social/community group, left largely to raise himself until Dutch and Hosea stepped in) into a believable modern context, as for the most part children who are orphaned are no longer left to fend for themselves in the streets 
    4. Arthur loved Isaac very, very much. I know he only mentions Isaac once in the game, when talking to Eagle Flies, and that other evidence of Arthur’s relationship with his son is scant at best, but I struggle to reconcile the idea of Arthur, who loves his odd little family very, very much, being an uninvolved or uninterested parent 
    5. Arthur also is a bit of a walking zoo. He has a menagerie of animals, most of them strays or rescues, and I headcanon that after this fic, Arthur makes his bread and butter running an animal rescue/rehabilitation operation out of his backyard. Charles is fond, but would _love_ to stop stepping in cow shit   
  

  2. Charles Smith: 
    1. is gay. Arthur doesn’t spend any time parsing anybody else’s sexualities because his own attraction is based less on compatible identities and more on established connection, so he doesn’t ever really ask 
    2. Charles, in this fic, is half-Oglala Lakota, federally recognized as the Oglala Sioux Tribe, sometimes also just called the Oglala or the Sioux, though Sioux is an inaccurate designation. Charles prefers to be called Oglala Lakota or Oglala, though he is relatively private about it, as he is in canon. He makes several allusions to growing up on parts of the Pine Ridge Reservation, one of the largest reservations in the US, and the poorest. Charles doesn’t talk much about his childhood, as is canon, and he also spent some time in the foster care system
    3. Charles served in the military as an Army Ranger and participated in several field missions, most notably Operation Just Cause in Panama. This is where he learned to ride a motorcycle



## Other Random Headcanons  
  


  1. Arthur and Charles do get married. They have to wait until 2014 and when they do get married it’s just at the courthouse, but still. It’s important to them   
  

  2. Most canon relationships -- Hosea/Bessie, Dutch/Annabelle, John/Abigail, Arthur/Mary, and then Arthur/Eliza, with Isaac as a product of that relationship -- have been carried over into this fic, just modernized. Other relationships have been messed with and tweaked as I felt like it  
  

  3. This fic is set in the 1990s! 1) For the aesthetic (mullets, y’all) and 2) because that was as late as I could set this fic and still believe that a fairly large group of criminals could operate without getting picked up on RICO charge  
  

  4. Several members of the Sons of Dutch are veterans -- Hosea (‘Nam), Uncle (Korea), Bill (US-Iran Conflict), the Callanders (US-Iran Conflict), Charles and Micah (Operation Desert Storm). This is not intended to be either pro- or anti-military on my part, but is intended to be a reflection of the socio-economic status Dutch’s gang occupies. They’re mostly blue-collar, working-class people, who are either recruited or drafted into the military at [much](https://search.proquest.com/openview/d6a1457e49f32ded828b20879b998bc8/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=35420) [higher](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/us/military-enlistment.html) [rates](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/the-military-targets-youth-for-recruitment) than middle- or upper-class people. Certain character portrayals -- specifically Bill being a deeply-closeted gay man -- are influenced by a military background, as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was in full force during the 1980s when Bill served, but, again the veteran status of several of the gang is not meant to make a political statement of any kind other than the fact that working class folks often bear both the brunt of military duty and its aftermath  
  

  5. BLM in this fic stands for Bureau of Land Management. The BLM is an agency within the Department of the Interior and is responsible for managing millions of acres of public lands in the United States, most of it concentrated in the West. The BLM manages public grazing/ranch land, several wilderness areas, some national monuments and US Wild and Scenic Rivers. The BLM leases many of its lands for energy development (mostly oil and natural gas) and is actually wildly unpopular with many ranchers and state governments. Google “Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge” if you’re interested! The BLM is **not** the same as the US National Parks Service, and while National Parks are also public lands, the things you can do on BLM land (i.e. drill for oil, graze your cattle, camp without permits (in some areas), etc) are different from what you’re allowed to do on NPS lands.   
  
As you might have noticed, I’m a enviro/natural resources management person. It’s fine. Defend your parklands, etc etc.   
  

  6. There is very little homophobia in this fic, despite it being set in a Midwestern town in the 1990s. This is because I am queer and I didn’t want to write about homophobia. A few characters, namely Micah and Bill, express varying degrees of homophobia at the beginning, but like I said I think writing about homophobia is very boring and I don’t want to, so. I didn’t  
  

  7. Locations:   
  

    1. Valentine is a Midwest-as-corn kind of town. In my head, New Hanover occupies space in the Arkansas/Texas/Oklahoma part of the country, with a little bit of western Appalachia thrown in
    2. Lemoyne occupies a slice between Texas (Scarlett Meadows) and southern Louisiana (Bayou Nwa, coastal Saint Denis, etc). In the game I despise Lemoyne - everything is haunted, possessed, a **vampire,** a racist, or wants to kill you - but IRL Texas is extremely nice to visit and Louisiana is a) beautiful and b) full of seafood, which makes it superior to other states (mine) that lack seafood 
    3. Ambarino is Wyoming/Colorado/the Montana highlands
    4. New Austin is West Texas



  
  


## Timelines

1960 - Arthur is born. Dutch is ten years older (b. 1950) and Hosea is sixteen (b. 1944). This makes Hosea eighteen (draft age) in 1962. He was drafted and sent to Vietnam in 1965, and served there across multiple tours until 1969. The circumstances surrounding his departure from Vietnam are unclear by Hosea’s own design. He mentions being in Korea during the Korean War a few times as well, due to being a “military brat” and travelling to different military installations with his parents

1969 - Hosea and Dutch meet when Hosea is twenty-five and Dutch nineteen. 

1969 - Arthur’s mother dies and his father, Lyle, takes sole custody of him.

1971 - Lyle is arrested and Arthur is transferred to state custody in Montana. Arthur moves through three foster homes by 1972. In 1972 he spends three months in juvenile detention and later in that year is sent to a new placement. 

1973 - Arthur, aged thirteen, runs away from his last placement. He ends up in Reno, Nevada, where Dutch and Hosea are fleecing marks. Arthur tries to steal from Dutch and ends up with parents instead

1974 - Dutch formally adopts Arthur in Texas. Arthur takes Dutch’s last name, as Hosea has several warrants out for his arrest 

1980 - Dutch, having collected several more “strays” like Arthur, officially founds the Sons of Dutch motorcycle club. Arthur is twenty, Dutch thirty, and Hosea thirty-six 

1981 - Arthur meets Mary. They begin to date, but their relationship is rocky and they never manage to stay together for more than a few months at a time. Mary finally breaks things off permanently in 1982.

1982 - John joins the gang at fourteen. Arthur has a fling with Eliza, a cocktail waitress, and his son Isaac is born towards the end of the year. The Sons of Dutch, now established and armed, began to operate as a “one-percenter” motorcycle club, getting involved mainly in gunrunning and minor drug dealing. 

1986 - Isaac and Eliza are killed during a failed home invasion. Arthur begins a destructive spiral and the Sons of Dutch escalate their criminal activities. 

1989 - The Sons of Dutch, now under federal investigation, decide to scale back and play at law-abiding citizens. Several members of the gang have been killed at this point and the bloodshed has begun to turn Hosea’s stomach

1990 - Dutch relocates the gang to the Midwest (Valentine) and buys Lost Country, which opens in 1991. They move most of their illegal operations to the back room. Arthur picks up some land in Ambarino, tired of being angry, and starts to collect horses after meeting Hamish, a Vietnam vet, and acquiring Hamish’s horse Buell

1996 - Arthur and Charles meet during a morning shift at Lost Country -- the story begins in May 1996, and ends at the end of summer of that same year 

1997 - Not in this fic, but this is the year that Arthur is able, with Hosea’s help, to extricate himself from the gang/motorcycle club and move to Montana with Charles

1998 - Lyra’s foal is born. He is, unfortunately for Arthur’s wallet and nerves, the first of many baby horses

2014 - Arthur and Charles, now crotchety old men with a profusion of horses, barn cats and other strays between them, officially tie the knot when gay marriage is legalized. They have, at this point, been functionally married for fifteen or so years 

  
  


## Some Tattoos

A lot of characters in this fic have tattoos! Partly because of the subculture that they inhabit--motorcycle clubs often have specific tattoos common among members, branches of the military have their own tattoo culture, and many alternative/subversive groups also favor tattoos. I also think tattoos are just neat. 

  1. Charles’s Tattoos: Lost Country!Charles is described with several tattoos:
    1. His mother’s name, which we don’t know in canon, so I didn’t guess at 
    2. [Lakota medicine arrows](https://symbolikon.com/downloads/medicine-arrows-lakota-sioux/), on his left shoulder
    3. [Lakota medicine wheel](https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/exhibition/healing-ways/medicine-ways/medicine-wheel.html), on his knee
    4. A sun, a lightning bolt and a star on his biceps. The sun, lightning bolt and star are part of the unit insignia of the 1st Ranger Battalion
  2. Arthur’s Tattoos: I didn’t describe too many of Arthur’s tats, but here are a few that I did! 
    1. A deer on his hip. The symbolism here should be apparent. I headcanon that Arthur drew all of his own tattoos, because I think his little drawings in his journal are really adorable 
    2. Two six-guns, one on each shoulder blade. No deep symbolism here, really, I just thought that those would look cool 
    3. He has a huge club logo/patch tattoo on his back, but I am not a very visual or artistic person, so I have no idea what it actually looks like. Assume it looks suitably biker-ish
  3. Bill’s Tattoos:
    1. A red diamond on his hand. The red diamond is the shoulder insignia of the 5th Infantry Division
    2. A red devil on his arm. The “Red Devils” were a nickname for soldiers in the 5th Infantry Division during the Vietnam War
  4. Sean’s Tattoos:
    1. Sean has a [Red Hand of Ulster](https://www.fireforceventures.com/assets/images/NorthernIreland%202.png) tattooed on his neck. The Red Hand is a heraldic symbol common in many families from Ulster, a county in Northern Ireland, and has sometimes been used by nationalist/Republican Irish groups as a symbol of Irish sovereignty



  
  


## A Glossary Of Terms

ATF - Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. A federal law enforcement agency that regulates, you guessed it, the sale of alcohol, tobacco and firearms 

Canyon carving - riding through a canyon or other road with lots of switchbacks. Pretty cool 

Chicken coop - trucker lingo for a weigh station 

Feeb - Slang term for an FBI agent (eff-bee, feeb) 

Kutte - also called a cut-off, battle vest or just “leather,” a kutte is a sleeveless vest, usually made of leather, commonly seen in biker subculture. Most kuttes have the club’s logo or insignia across the back and other patches and rockers, which usually denote an individual biker’s achievements or position in a club, on the front. 

One-percenter - see “outlaw.” A motorcycle club involved in criminal activity, what we would classicallly think of as a “biker gang.” Comes from the term “Ninety-nine percent of motorcycle clubs are law-abiding,” which implies that one percent of motorcycle clubs are not law-abiding

Outlaw - see “one-percenter.” An outlaw biker is a biker that breaks the law. Most motorcycle clubs are social groups. A few are not. An “outlaw club” is a motorcycle club engaged in a criminal enterprise, such as drug dealing, moving guns, or prostitution 

Patch over - one motorcycle club being absorbed into another, taking the “patch” or insignia of the larger or more-established club as their own. Can be done for a lot of reasons

RICO - Racketeer Influenced and Criminal Organizations Act. A federal statue that allows larger organizations to be tried for individual crimes if said crimes are part of a criminal enterprise. For example, if Dutch tells Micah to murder a man and Micah gets caught, Dutch can be prosecuted under RICO for ordering the crime 

West Coast turnarounds - meth or other “upper” drugs, but usually meth 

## Arthur’s Horses

Brought to you by the fact that I’ve had like seven playthroughs and each time I’m beyond pissed that you can only have five horses at a time. All the horses that appear in this fic (that are Arthur’s, anyway) are horses that I had in various playthrough states.

I will not be taking comments about this at this time.

It’s a good thing for all y’all that I did not start playing RDO during the development of this fic, because I have gone ABSOLUTELY NUTS over the role horses. It’s basically turned into “Don’t Talk To Me Or My Breton Or My Breton Or My Cob Or My Breton,” the video game. 

  1. [ROOSTER](https://www.gtabase.com/igallery/4201-4300/RDR2_Horses_ArabianHorse_WarpedBrindleArabian_2-4222-1080.jpg) \- Warped brindle Arabian, a stallion. The naming theme of this playthrough, because I did have specific naming themes for each of my playthroughs, because I’m an incorrigible nerd, was “birds” 
  2. [LYRA ](https://static2.thegamerimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Red-Dead-Redemption-2-White-Arabian-Horse.jpg)\- White Arabian, a mare. Her theme was “stars & constellations”
  3. [SULTAN](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/reddeadredemption/images/7/76/RDR_2_Arabian_Horse.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20181008163010) \- Red chestnut Arabian, Lyra’s foal from the deleted scenes, a stallion. One of my Epilogue horses. I don’t want to talk about how many Arabians are on this list. 
  4. [CLOUDRUNNER](https://www.gtabase.com/igallery/2801-2900/RDR2_Horses_Thoroughbred_BrindleThoroughbred-2804-360.jpg) \- Brindle Thoroughbred, a mare. By the time I got to her playthrough (my last and most recent) I had run out of themes and was just giving horses straight-up Warrior Cats names. (Other runners-up from this playthrough were my brown leopard appy, Specklenose, and my strawberry roan Ardennes, Fireheart. Shut up) 
  5. [KESTREL](https://66.media.tumblr.com/f400e70b9171a1fe9d1887ee4fc9f7c1/tumblr_pk6hgtczPW1sevqgp_1280.jpg) \- SDP Missouri Fox Trotter, a mare. I managed to glitch her in Chapter 2 during my “birds” game and rode her throughout the whole thing. My amber champagne MFT from this playthrough, Finch, also almost made it into this fic
  6. [MAGNOLIA](https://www.gtabase.com/igallery/2601-2700/RDR2_Horses_HungarianHalfbred_PiebaldTobianoHungarianHalfbred-2651-1080.jpg) \- Piebald Hungarian halfbred, a mare. The theme of her playthrough was “plants.” One of my top three favorite horses in the game, and I have wrecked many a mission in Chapter 3 poaching piebald halfbreds from lawmen and caravan guards. #worthit 
  7. [RELIANCE](https://i.redd.it/c94f79l9ejm31.jpg) \- Rose grey Andalusian, a mare. This playthrough’s theme was “attributes.” Staunch, the black Shire in the deleted scenes, also comes from this playthrough
  8. [HEMINGWAY](https://www.gtabase.com/igallery/2601-2700/RDR2_Horses_Mustang_WildBayMustang-2637-1080.jpg) \- Wild bay mustang, a gelding. His theme was “famous authors.” Again, I’m a giant nerd with an English degree, as this fic might have told you
  9. [BLUE](https://66.media.tumblr.com/4b6816255a42045da4eeaca67929f8d1/tumblr_pqquwdr59L1x8zaz3o2_r2_500.png) \- Silver tail buckskin American Standardbred, a gelding, except in-game I thought the silver tail looked kind of goofy so I fixed it at the stable. His tail is black, and matches his mane. I’ve only made it to the Epilogue twice and did not have name themes for either time; being that this is an Epilogue horse in-game Arthur has never ridden him, but he’s too pretty for the likes of John and I love him a lot, so



## Inspiration

Over the last… twenty... months, as I’ve been chewing on this fic, there have been several sources of inspiration that kind of shaped the way it turned out! If you liked this fic, you might like some of them, though I would proceed with caution where noted. 

  * _Hell or High Water,_ film (2016). One of the best examples of a “neo-Western.” Also one of the hottest iterations of Chris Pines. Strongly recommend, but does have some difficult scenes. Deals a lot with modern outlawry and rural poverty in the West


  * "Justified," television (2009-2015). Another really great example of a neo-Western, despite being set in rural Eastern Kentucky. One of my all-time favorite shows. Also deals with the consequences of generational poverty, generational trauma and generational disenfranchisement. My take on Sadie was fleshed out a lot by Ava Crowder. Timothy Olyphant is objectively one of the most handsome human men in existence. Trigger warning for Boyd Crowder and Quarles, if you make it to Season Three 


  * "Sons of Anarchy," television (2009-20...15? 16? I don’t remember, as I never finished.) Pretty much the definitive “biker gang” TV show. The first few seasons are entertaining and Charlie Hunnam remains a fairly good actor through Season 4, which is where I stopped, but DO proceed with caution. TW for extreme violence, racism, homophobia, sexual assault and violence towards women and children. I never finished, but I’ve been told that the last few seasons are particularly gruesome
  * _[Lonesome Dove](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonesome_Dove), _book (1975). This is… the definitive Western, for me. I recommend this book to EVERYONE. The whole… quadrilogy? Cycle? is very good, if you have the time to read in this season of high anxiety  
  

  * “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver. I’m not going to lie, about 95% of my creative undertakings are shaped in some way or form by Mary Oliver. “Wild Geese” happened to be the most apropos to this fic, and “clean blue” was a working title for this fic, briefly. (see below for more working titles! This fic! Refused! To be named!)  
  

  * I’m quoting “Wild Geese” here in its entirety, on the off chance that I can bludgeon more people over the head with Mary Oliver. Not sorry, you’re welcome, etc etc. Particularly relevant lines (read: lines that made me put the chapbook down, shrieking) are bolded: 



_“_ **_You do not have to be good._ **

_You do not have to walk on your knees_

_for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting._

**_You only have to let the soft animal of your body_ **

**_love what it loves._ **

_Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine._

_Meanwhile the world goes on._

**_Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain_ **

**_are moving across the landscapes,_ **

_over the prairies and the deep trees,_

_the mountains and the rivers._

_Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,_

_are heading home again._

**_Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,_ **

**_the world offers itself to your imagination_ ** _,_

_calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –_

_over and over announcing your place_

_in the family of things.”_

  * This fic’s playlist, found [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Z1iuySbeKy23PJxch3E7L?si=BTUBMuWsQmaztALoLceCZw). Music not included in the playlist for one reason or another (mostly because it didn’t mesh with the coffeeshop/esque genre of the first several chapters) but was still influential:
    * “[MIDDLE CHILD](https://genius.com/J-cole-middle-child-lyrics),” J. Cole (the whole chorus)
    * “[Martial Law](https://genius.com/Caskey-martial-law-lyrics),” Caskey (‘fore I lay ya down, I’m gon’ ride)
    * “[Don’t Wanna Fight](https://genius.com/Alabama-shakes-dont-wanna-fight-lyrics),” Alabama Shakes (I take from my hands / Put in your hands / The fruit of all my grief)
    * “[Beat the Devil’s Tattoo](https://genius.com/Black-rebel-motorcycle-club-beat-the-devils-tattoo-lyrics),” BRMC (c’mon y’all, is it a biker au if BRMC isn’t at least a little bit of an influence)
    * “[It’s Called: Freefall](https://genius.com/Rainbow-kitten-surprise-its-called-freefall-lyrics),” Rainbow Kitten Surprise (if this had just a hair more twang, it would’ve made it onto the playlist)
    * “[Drop the Game](https://genius.com/Flume-and-chet-faker-drop-the-game-lyrics),” Flume & Chet Faker (you’re the heat that I know / listen, you are my sun)
    * “[All These Walking Thoughts](https://genius.com/Roo-panes-all-these-walking-thoughts-lyrics),” Roo Panes (I could live a lifetime / trying to understand and learn / but some things are too damn deep / to make sense of) (this fic was called ‘walking thoughts’ for about three months of its development, until I was minding my own damn business inside my local Target and was kneecapped by Delta Rae)
    * “[Sleeping on the Blacktop](https://genius.com/Colter-wall-sleeping-on-the-blacktop-lyrics),” Colter Wall. This is on my playlist, but I wanted to single it out especially because it really, really just. Slaps. “A Bottle & A Glass” was another goddamn working title
    * “[Pyro](https://genius.com/Kings-of-leon-pyro-lyrics),” Kings of Leon. If you bother dropping 2 hours and 43 minutes listening to the playlist, “Pyro” is the, uh, cornerstone of both the playlist and the fic. I couldn’t pull a lyric out for the title without sounding like an asshole, so I went with “Is There Anyone Out There,” which is the second… cornerstone. It’s fine, this metaphor works, most buildings have at least four corners 
    * (... a third corner is “If I Go, I’m Goin’,” Gregory Alan Isakov. Yes, between the ages of twelve and sixteen I listened exclusively to soft folky music) 
    * (I didn’t mean for this playlist to turn into a Caamp rec list either, but Caamp is just. Really, really good, okay?)  
  

  * This fic’s tag on my tumblr, found [here](https://ryehouses.tumblr.com/tagged/lost+country+tag/). Most of it is me bitching about actually having to write the damn thing, but it also includes landscapes, music, poetry and literature that was relevant



  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand that's a wrap, folks! 
> 
> I want to thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart. Your kudos, hits, comments and reactions have been so, so, so appreciated, and I want to thank you all for sharing in this journey with me. 
> 
> I have a couple of other RDR concepts kicking around in various folders, so I might have something else in a few weeks, but I might not. 
> 
> Thank you all! I hope you enjoyed this odd little adventure as much as I did!

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS:
> 
> Mild language, mild violence, mild blood. Mentions of injury. Mentions of alcoholism. Alcohol will be present throughout. Vague mentions of Arthur's rather unhappy childhood. A lot of horses. 
> 
> I have A LOT of notes so at the risk of infodumping where it's not wanted or spoiling anything too early, I will hold off on my notes 'til the end. If you have a specific question, though, please drop a line in the comments and I will dump happily away! 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
